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Derek_Bullock
12-02-2006, 09:04 AM
Think about it. #What are we going to be eating in the future when Governments ban both professional and recreation fishing.

Will it be cheap imports coming from dubios aquaculture methods. #Will Australia be able to compete.

The article below shows just what is happening already in the growing aquaculture industry in Vietname.


Derek




WHAT FISH IS THAT?

"Things that batter" #

23/11/2005 #

By Anthony Hoy


Australia's appetite for fish and chips is being fed by Pacific dory, aka Mekong River catfish, which is set to dwarf our local fishing industry. #

Anthony Hoy reports:

Fish and chips, a wedge of lemon, lashings of batter and salt - a splash of vinegar to dilute the grease, perhaps - and all washed down with a soft drink, a frosty ale or a glass of vino.

December, the start of the long, hot summer. Bring on the lazy weekends and coastal holidays. Forget slaving over a hot stove or a barbecue: dinner is served, at the beach, in cardboard cartons, or parceled up in newsprint lined with greaseproof paper.

But something is missing, and it's not the seagulls or the flies. #

The good, fresh, local catch that Australians have for generations associated with their fish and chips - the flathead, snapper, silver and john dory, red fish, bream and whiting - are in increasingly short supply and, as a result, are becoming prohibitively expensive.

In their place in the fish-and-chips pack, like it or not, is "Pacific dory", the so-called "catch of the day" - an innocuous skinless, boneless and bland-flavored fillet.

Pacific dory is now Australia's biggest-selling fish, according to the Master Fish Merchants Association (MFMA).

With sales approaching a staggering 7000 tonnes this year, it is driving a fish shop revolution. Says MFMA chief executive, Michael Kitchener: "Because it is relatively cheap, retailing at around $10 per kilogram, the public love it."

The problem, according to the chairman of the Australian Fish Names Committee, Roy Palmer, is that Pacific dory has never seen the Pacific - or any other ocean, for that matter. #

And it is nothing like a dory.

Here's food for thought: the fish you will probably sink your teeth into the next time you are beachside and hungry has been raised in cages suspended under houseboats and barges in the crowded and polluted waters of Vietnam's Mekong River.

The same snap-frozen and imported fish, says Palmer, is being sold as a popular line in Australian supermarkets under the deceptive marketing label, "freshwater fillet".

It is Pangasius bocourti, one of 21 species of freshwater catfish found in the Mekong basin, and - in a move designed to curb deceptive naming practices by fishmongers and supermarkets - last year christened "basa" under Seafood Services Australia's uniform fish names process.

"Basa's success in the marketplace has been a key factor in fish imports from Vietnam doubling in 2002-03 and then doubling again last year," says managing director of the Sydney Fish Market, Grahame Turk.

An estimated 300,000 to 400,000 Vietnamese are involved in the government-owned basa fishery. #

It produces more basa than Australia's total seafood production of 550,000 tonnes a year, according to Turk, who is also deputy chairman of the Australian Seafood Industry Council. Vietnam's basa production, Turk says, is expected to reach 1 million tonnes a year within five years.

Vietnam's catfish exports have already decimated the local catfish industry in the US where producers are fighting back.

There is no basa-farming standard among Vietnamese processors, according to the American domestic fishing lobby, thus there is no distinction in the marketplace between professionally farmed product and caged fish from Mekong houseboats and barges.

Sewage systems along the Mekong struggle to keep pace with rapid development, and run-off from the river's hinterland is polluted by fertilisers and pesticides.

American industry sources claim large stocks of basa are fed through holes cut in the floors of houseboats, the human waste from which also goes straight into the river. #

Food for the fish includes vegetable and crop waste, rice bran and animal waste.

The Mekong and associated aquaculture ponds have a high silt concentration, say the Americans, and it is common Vietnamese practice to soak the basa fillets in sodium tripolyphosphate (STPP), a chemical used as a preservative and seafood "texturiser".

This means that consumers who purchase basa by weight from Australian supermarkets need to be wary, because fish treated with STPP retain more water.

In August, the American states of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana suspended the sale of all Vietnamese aquatic products, following the discovery of the antibiotics ciprofloxacin and enrofloxacin in basa imports.

Ciprofoxacin and enrofloxacin - prohibited in western countries because of the risk of their transferring resistant micro-organisms to humans - were being used by some Mekong River basa producers to combat salmonella and other disease in fish.

The antibiotics can also lead to the development of the infectious disease campylobacter, which can cause diarrhoea, abdominal pain, fever, nausea and vomiting. Vietnam's Ministry of Fisheries has foreshadowed restrictions on the use of 11 antibiotics in its aquatic products sector.

The use of the name basa in place of Pacific dory is not yet mandatory in Australia, says Roy Palmer, "even though there are a lot of reasons why it should be".

An Australian standard for fish names is expected to be launched early in the new year, as a preliminary step towards legislative controls.

"One of the problems is that every state has different arrangements," Palmer says. #

"Until there is uniformity, people can drive holes through these issues.

"And the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service [charged with responsibility for making sure imports meet Australian food standards] does not check fish names. This remains a big problem."


Anthony Hoy

chanquetas
12-02-2006, 01:52 PM
Derek,
The Australian Government will never ban recreational fishing.
They may make some areas off-limits as fish havens, but thats not necessarily a bad thing.
My google search on Basa also returned the link to this article, unfortunately though it was on the No Notion party website. Just couldnt bring myself to look at it.
Cheers,
Jake

Derek_Bullock
12-02-2006, 02:10 PM
Never say never. #

Look at the people of North Queensland, I bet they would never have believed that the Government would close 33% of their prime fishing areas.

It has already happened overseas in Europe.

The Democrats have drafted the Legislation. Its called The National Animal Welfare Bill http://parlinfoweb.aph.gov.au/parlinfo/Repository/Legis/Bills/Linked/20060507.pdf

While it may now be just sitting there, as soon as one of the bigger parties want the support if the Democrats they will trot it out.
Below are a few extracts and comments from it.


Derek

[hr]

In the Definitions (Page 79) the Bill defines an animal is any of the following:
(a) a live member of a vertebrate animal taxon;

The common definition of a vertebrate is - An animal with a backbone that includes mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes

Section 64 (Page 40) of the Bill states: Division 2—Cruelty offences
64 Animal cruelty prohibited
(1) A person must not be cruel to an animal.
Maximum penalty: 1000 penalty units or imprisonment for 2
years.
(2) Without limiting subsection (1), a person is taken to be cruel to an
animal if the person does any of the following to the animal:
(a) causes it pain that, in the circumstances, is unjustifiable,
unnecessary or unreasonable;

Further in the Definitions (Page 68) pain refers to both psychological and physical pain and, in an animal, is taken to be the same sensation that an average, well human, having suffered the same trauma, would experience. #So what they are saying is that to hook a fish in the mouth is no different to hooking a human in the mouth.

Section 82 (Page 49) states: Meaning of prohibited event
A prohibited event means:
(a) a bullfight or organised event held for public entertainment in
which a person provokes a bull in a way that is likely to
cause it to charge;
(b) a cockfight or dogfight or other event in which an animal
fights, or is encouraged to fight, with another animal;
(c) a canned hunt or other event in which an animal is killed in
an enclosure to obtain a trophy;
(d) coursing or any other event in which an animal is released
from captivity to be hunted, injured or killed by another
animal;
(e) an event in which an animal is released from captivity to be
hunted, or shot at by a person;
(f) an event prescribed under a regulation held for public
enjoyment or entertainment, with or without charge to
anyone present, at which anyone participating in the event
causes an animal pain.

Check out paragraph (f) carefully. #A simple regulation could mean a fishing competition would be a prohibited event.

Derek_Bullock
12-02-2006, 02:16 PM
Yes, I also found the article on the One Nation Party website. Not sure how it got there, dont really care.

Anthony Hoy is a well known journalist and researcher and you will find this and many other articles of his if you do a search.

I am in no way associated with One Nation and neither do I support them. :)


Derek

gif
12-02-2006, 07:52 PM
Derek

I think its stronger than that:

If a hook hurts a human then it is deemed to hurt an animal (fish) and is banned. Section 1 overrides all the rest_ all "cruelty" is banned

Therefore all fishing with hooks is banned. Not just competitions.

Derek - is my brief analysis probably correct ?

If I am right - This is not an animal welfare Bill - it is an animal rights bill and stronger than any in the world

Derek_Bullock
12-02-2006, 07:59 PM
Further in the Definitions (Page 68) pain refers to both psychological and physical pain and, in an animal, is taken to be the same sensation that an average, well human, having suffered the same trauma, would experience. #So what they are saying is that to hook a fish in the mouth is no different to hooking a human in the mouth.

Section in the middle Gary and yes you are right in my opinion. #I also think in the end it's the little obscure sections of this proposed legislation that will have the most impact.

The Democrats say they are not against recreational fishing yet they deliberately target it in this legislation and their support of the Green/Conservation Movement.


Derek

Gazza
15-02-2006, 10:58 AM
just vote strategically ,and the EXTREME looney left/right ,get pushed over the edge into OBLIVION.....

yeah,yeah ,i know pigs MIGHT fly as well ;)

gif
15-02-2006, 11:48 AM
Hi Derek

It seems that you are both right and wrong when you write this

Look at the people of North Queensland, I bet they would never have believed that the Government would close 33% of their prime fishing areas.

Theu closed of 33% of the reef - True But they took a lot more than that. By telling people "tell us where you fish so we don't zone that green" then all these areas were immediety taken.

So the Public Servants had a mandate to take 33% but they took the best 33% and the Minsiter later said publically that he had been convinced that they had in fact take 75% of the fishng areas.

In one submission clever Commercial fishers all said that a certain spot was very important to fishing. In truth that was a made up area with no fish at all. Guess what - it was zoned green!


Gary

baldyhead
15-02-2006, 09:00 PM
Unfortunately Gary you are 100% correct