Tuesday 9 June 2009

A Fishy Panic

Here we go again - another food-based moral panic, borne aloft by celebrity hot air. Yes, everyone's going to stop buying tuna now, on the say-so of such renowned experts on the finny tribe as Sting and Charlize Theron. As the BBC News piece makes pretty clear, it is actually very easy indeed to buy pole-and-line caught tuna, and the tins in the supermarket are not going to be bluefin, but rather the extremely abundant skipjack, aka the 'rat of the sea'. Meanwhile, I learnt from last night's Springwatch that the herring gull, one of the rats of the air, is on the Red List of endangered species, along with the giant panda, the white rhino and, er, the starling - not to mention 70 per cent of all plants assessed so far. Endangered old world, isn't it? Must book Bono to headline a Save the Shitehawk benefit concert... Are Flock of Seagulls still in business?

5 comments:

  1. What about the pigeons? Won't somebody please think of the pigeons! That horrid Red Ken has hunted them almost to the point of extinction.

    At least Boris has done something for the tunas. No hang on, it's the tuners. Will you be tickling the public ivories, Nige?

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  2. The Mafia doesn't sound like the ideal organization to be managing the few remaining stocks of bluefin tuna. I fear these celebrities may have a point. Would you eat a steak if it came with a sticker saying "Hand-reared by Don Corleone"? Why make an exception for a fish.

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  3. Pity that the brown ox isn't an endangered species.

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  4. Axe the ox! Not a bad slogan.

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  5. Did you know that wherever you are in the sea you're always within 20' of a skipjack tuna?

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