Filet-O-Fish Stocks Running Low?

[Dr. Cheese]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/sc...o_interstitial

Interesting read.

[Joe Gress]

Saw that this morning. Made me appreciate my fish sammich even more.

[LCW]

I read that earlier............gross. I dont know why but i will not eating any water animal, any animal that lives under water will not go into my mouth . I use to say i was allergic to fish because i would vomit when i ate it but i dont know if thats true.


That fish is ugly looking, makes me glad i eat McChickens...........wait whats there chickens look like?

[CrispyDelicious]

Whatever. Snails aren't pretty, but I mow 'em like popcorn.

[WookieeForLife]

I eat land animals.

[5StringBlues]

I like nuts.

[DeluxeRed]

Originally Posted by LCW

That fish is ugly looking, makes me glad i eat McChickens...........wait whats there chickens look like?

There was quite the stir a few years back when Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to KFC and started advertising, if I recall, "Crunchy strips" or something equally chicken-less sounding. The rumour was that they stopped using real chickens and started using engineered chickenoids that were all meat and no feathers, and therefore had to take the word "chicken" out of their name and product description.

Then they started using the word "chicken" again, but no one knows if they really switched to chickens, or got the FDA/FTC to allow them to call chickenoid meat "chicken".

[Smurf-o-Deth]

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

[Jared Lash]

Originally Posted by DeluxeRed

There was quite the stir a few years back when Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name to KFC and started advertising, if I recall, "Crunchy strips" or something equally chicken-less sounding. The rumour was that they stopped using real chickens and started using engineered chickenoids that were all meat and no feathers, and therefore had to take the word "chicken" out of their name and product description.

Then they started using the word "chicken" again, but no one knows if they really switched to chickens, or got the FDA/FTC to allow them to call chickenoid meat "chicken".

That rumor was always hilarious to me. Did anyone actually believe that KFC raises its own chickens in the first place? I suppose Ben & Jerry's has thousands of dairys so that they produce enough cream.

I'm guessing they went to the abbreviation because every word in their title was a liability of some sort:

Kentucky - is lost on international customers
Fried - true or not it paints their food as unhealthy.
Chicken - limits their product line somewhat

KFC is one of those things that I eat about once every five years. Sort of like Taco Bell but without the diarrhea as a reminder of why I don't generally eat there.

Originally Posted by Smurf-o-Deth

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Nice.

[Thunderscreech]

Originally Posted by LCW

I read that earlier............gross. I dont know why but i will not eating any water animal, any animal that lives under water will not go into my mouth . I use to say i was allergic to fish because i would vomit when i ate it but i dont know if thats true.


That fish is ugly looking, makes me glad i eat McChickens...........wait whats there chickens look like?

I'll take fish over chicked. At least I know it's fish and not chicken mixed with chicken by-products and filler.

[LCW]

I worked fast food in high school 2007-2008. Nasty , it was del taco i watched employees spit in food , i worked there 14 months and never had a food handlers card, most people including myself would go hours without washing your hands because it can be so busy there is no time. I was 17 and needed a job i wont ever do that again.


I watched the super size me movie and i guess mcdonalds uses old chickens that are dieing and cant lay eggs anymore?

[Thunderscreech]

^

which is why i don't eat fast food, unless it's like Chipotle or Chik-Fil-A. Why those? Well, One I can SEE what is being done, and the other employs my girlfriend and has stringent standards.

And I even don't eat it all that much... Which is probably why i barely eat at all...

[LCW]

Originally Posted by Thunderscreech

^

which is why i don't eat fast food, unless it's like Chipotle or Chik-Fil-A. Why those? Well, One I can SEE what is being done, and the other employs my girlfriend and has stringent standards.

And I even don't eat it all that much... Which is probably why i barely eat at all...

Exactly man , it seriously disgusting the things i saw and worked around , i was just part time 20 hours a week kid and i kept my mouth shut about things. I just wanted a pay check and to leave. Places like taco bell , kfc , del taco , taco time , burger king , carls jr have at least one employee in every resturant pulling stuff like that. People work fast food mainly because they are uneducated and druggies fast food joints dont UA. Of course there are some honest people just trying to make a living but more often thats not the case.

At least at places like subway for example its made in front of you BUT someone has to open the store and all those items have to be "prepped" cut up etc, and someone can just spit in it then. I know someone who has worked at most fast food places and i hear the horror stories.

Suprisingly Mcdonalds seems best ..........taco bell sounds scaring as hell i will NOT eat there.

[BartmanPDX]

Maybe the Hamburglar has given up red meat?

[Phalex]

Sounds kind of hokey to me......

[Thunderscreech]

Originally Posted by LCW

Suprisingly Mcdonalds seems best ..........taco bell sounds scaring as hell i will NOT eat there.

Taco Bell is on my **** list (literally) because of an incident involving nasty beer and taco bell that resuled in a reversal of my digestive tract and one of the nastiest tastes I HAVE EVER tasted.

Lets just say that, after that, Taco Bell was no longer the food of choice...

[Thor]

As many here know, this is this industry I work in.

Here is the position from www.seafood.com , an industry trade letter:

In other news, the NY Times had a front page story on Hoki, which appeared to us as a classic case of a reporter searching for a non-existent problem. The way the story is written suggests that the reporter started thinking he would uncover some type of bad behavior in the fact that major U.S. chains such as McDonald's and Yum brands have used hoki in fish sandwiches. Instead, he found a properly managed fishery, with the primary critics not government agencies as he claimed, but groups such as WWF and the Royal Forest and Bird Society, which objected at the time MSC recertified the hoki fishery. We publish his story, and our analysis, because it seems a useful example of how the media is years behind current industry practice in its thinking about fisheries issues


(Analysis by industry consultant John Sackton below):

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS by John Sackton (Editorial Comment) Sept. 10, 2009 - We have reprinted a Hoki story on the front page of the NY Times today that basically says nothing.

It is a classic case where the reporter started out believing he was uncovering a huge fisheries scandal -- i.e. that McDonald's and Yum Brands were using some kind of unsavory unsustainable species in their fish sandwiches. But then the facts contradicted his prior impression, and the article turns to mush.

The basic issue with hoki is that stocks have declined and the fishery managers and the industry in New Zealand have cut back heavily on catches to keep the fishery sustainable. This is exactly how fisheries management is supposed to work, and is the basic reason the MSC re-certified hoki a couple of years ago, despite getting objections from some environmental groups.

The issues raised by WWF and others were issues such as habitat destruction from bottom trawling, and interaction of the species with the other parts of the ecosystem - all issues that are not specific to Hoki, but exist in any groundfish fishery using trawl gear.

The reporter felt he had stumbled on a scandal. He said 'arguments over managing this resource are flaring not only between commercial interests and conservationists, but also among the environmental agencies most directly involved in monitoring and regulating the catch.'

Yet the article failed to provide a single instance of disagreement among government agencies - the only disagreements cited were from those objectors to the MSC certification, such as WWF and Royal Forest and Bird, both of whom are on record criticizing bottom trawling in general.

Further, in an effort to link McDonald's and Yum Brands to Hoki, he cited a 8 year old Seafood Business article, written when catches of hoki were rising and it was increasingly being used by major chains. In the last few years, Yum brands has ceased using hoki entirely, and McDonald's has cut back its purchases by about 1/3, and its purchases of hoki are miniscule (perhaps in the range of 10-15%) compared to its purchases of Alaska pollock, which is the mainstay of its filet-o-fish product.

So the entire scandal premise of the article has proved to be false. The fishery is sustainably managed. There is no attempt to hide the fact that some vendors are using hoki, although their usage has declined as the fish is less available. The fact that a whole fish is ugly or not what is usually considered to be a nice looking fish is quite irrelevant to the consumers of hoki fillets.

The bottom line is that the article says nothing new - it simply rehashes in a incoherent way the same arguments that were addressed during the MSC recertification process.

The only reason an editor and writer would undertake such an article in a major newspaper is if they felt initially they were able to expose some type of bad behavior. When that didn't happen, the premise of the article kind of fell apart.

It is high time that the discussion of fisheries issues focus on real problems - not the manufactured fears raised by advocacy groups far from the actual issues.

This view was clearly stated by the WWF spokesman, who said 'We are currently working with both industry and government to rectify all these issues. Our hope is that we will see great change and willingness by industry and, importantly, government to improve the situation dramatically.'

In this case, the reality of the problem solving is miles ahead of the journalistic mind set of those writing about fisheries. A better article would have been to interview managers, environmentalists, and industry about steps being taken to improve the fishery.

That pretty much sums up what I think about it as well.
Media filler.

[MakiSupaStar]

Originally Posted by Phalex

Sounds kind of hokey to me......

[MJ5150]

Originally Posted by LCW

any animal that lives under water will not go into my mouth....

Nice, I say the same thing. I had a guy ask me if it was a religious thing once because I said it with such conviction.

Tell me this.....do you still get people who ask you "what about.....?" I don't know how else to explain it to some people. NO animal under water just doesn't seem to get through to everyone.

-Mike

[peterbright]

Eat a Big Mac and forgeddabout it.