How Norway Created Salmon Sushi

http://www.npr.org/2015/09/18/441530790/how-the-desperate-norwegian-salmon-industry-created-a-sushi-staple

by ascertain • 11 years ago

244 86 11 years ago

speaking of sushi, here's a video about the extinction of blue fin tuna (includes economics, history, culture): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hivvTo6VSS8

sovande2• 11 years ago

One more reason to eat salmon sushi, salmon is farmed and will not go extinct.

4ad2• 11 years ago

Farmed salmon is much inferior to wild salmon though.

morganm• 11 years ago

Open-net pen farmed salmon is done in the same water sources that wild salmon swim through. Farmed salmon have no natural predators so viruses are more readily transmitted to their wild counterparts. For more information: http://www.salmonconfidential.ca/

See Oceanwise's salmon recommendations:

http://www.oceanwise.ca/seafood/salmon

ceejayoz2• 11 years ago

Tuna's much harder to farm (the fry have a tendency to kill themselves in inventive ways), but they've figured it out in recent years.

hellofunk4• 11 years ago

Fascinating. I love sushi but never knew that so much of it was actually of Norway's influence. Unlike the famed influence of sushi chefs in west Canada and California in the mid-20th century, which carried over into the names of popular sushi rolls (the "California" roll), it would seem this Norway invention was even more important, but where are my Norway rolls?

tormeh2• 11 years ago

Keep in mind that California is very good at PR. Or bragging. Depends on how you look at it. Other places are similar, of course. Paris, and France in general, comes to mind, but so does Berlin. London can't decide if it's awesome or rubbish, but it knows it's important. California is convinced it's the center of the universe.

hellofunk4• 11 years ago

The the logic I can draw from your statement is that Norway is a very humble place :)

azernik2• 11 years ago

Because the thing Norway brought to Japan already had a name (it's a fish!).

MrJagil• 11 years ago

As always when sushi is mentioned on HN, here is a link to the fine documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1772925/

And Tampopo should be in the same vain, supposedly very good, fiction though: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092048

lamby• 11 years ago

As always when sushi is mentioned on HN, here is a link to the fine documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Which always amuses me because, at least to me, «Jiro Dreams of Sushi» is not remotely about sushi at all.

sho• 11 years ago

To be fair, it actually is remotely about sushi.

malnourish• 11 years ago

Tampopo and The Funeral are both incredible films by Itami, who was a master. Excellent satirist. The Funeral is also one of the "comfiest" movies I have ever seen.

pi-rat• 11 years ago

Visiting sushi places in Japan, they often have pictures of northern lights and Norwegian mountains telling customers they have fresh salmon shipped from Norway by air: http://www.eikeland.se/snap/salmon.jpg

ramgorur• 11 years ago

the name of the brand is 'aurora salmon'

semi-extrinsic• 11 years ago

I'm told that they fly cargo planes with salmon from Norway to Japan, unload salmon then fill the planes with electronics, fly to eastern Europe where the various brands have their continent-wide warehouses, unload electronics and then fly to Norway to load up with salmon again.

pvaldes14• 11 years ago

A very interesting connection with our laptops. And very logical also; a common trick when you export something is to assure to fill the wide containers with anything that you can buy cheap in the destiny country before to return home. Thus you optimize your transport costs or, like in this case, share it with other companies.

pvaldes14• 11 years ago

Another way of see this is that both, Japan and Norway have a big aquaculture industry and they compete.

To assure the control of the salmon's market is an essential goal for Norway as nation; they produce 1 million of tons each year for the european market. When somebody tries to farm new salmon (in France or Spain or whatever) they typically flood the market with below cost salmon or trouts until the competence is distroyed by lack of rentability. This is probably the reason for not having salmon farms in the NW pacific that could be much more convenient for the Japanese market in the 80's. Only very big companies with lots of resources and money can dare to enter here.

twic• 11 years ago

Interesting. Quite a lot of salmon and trout in the UK is Scottish. It never occurred to me that we might only be eating it locally, and not exporting it.

4ad2• 11 years ago

It is exported, I can find it in Austria, however, it's no near as prevalent as Norwegian or Austrian (yes!) salmon.

Than being said, prices are now crazy low in Austria compared to what they were a few years ago.

roel_v• 11 years ago

In the Netherlands Scottish salmon is sold as 'premium'. Funny how these things go sometimes.

pvaldes14• 11 years ago

UK produces 162.000 ton of farmed salmon in Scotland and 11.000 ton of rainbow trout (2012) but it lacks of many suitable areas to growth and currently is the 5 or 6th european country.

Norway produced instead 1,3 million tons of salmon in 2012 (and growing). Is the first european productor and by far the largest (Spain is the second with about 260.000 tons/year of mussels). Their aquaculture industry is an strategic sector for this 'small' (in terms of population) nation.

Is interesting how Norway won against the huge japan pride focusing in improving the visibility in supermarkets and targetting people that wanted cheap food. Realizing that to target first the higher social classes was a lost battle from the start.

azernik2• 11 years ago

I've only started to see Scottish salmon in the US in the last couple of years, and that only in smoked form. Very good stuff.

beachstartup• 11 years ago

scottish salmon is on a lot of menus in california. it is generally sold as a premium pan-roasted fish entree. it's quite good, almost as good as alaskan (king, sockeye) which is the primary wild market salmon here in ca.

i believe i've seen it in new york as well.

bjelkeman-again2• 11 years ago

Does this dumping not bring in the WTO? I can only find this reference from 2009 claiming they have stopped dumping. http://www.eu-norway.org/news/repeals_anti_dumping/#.Vf1gScR...

prostoalex• 11 years ago

Dumping has to involve a government subsidy. Selling the product below cost at manufacturer's or investor's expense is just an aggressive market acquisition strategy.

reitanqild• 11 years ago

  When somebody tries to farm new salmon (in France or Spain 
  or whatever) they typically flood the market with below cost 
  salmon or trouts until the competence is distroyed by lack of
  rentability.

10 years ago (I think) Norwegian salmon farmers was penalized big time by EU authorities. Haven't heard about anything since then and I refuse to think that Scottish aquafarmers would pass up an opportunity to get the Norwegians in hot water unless you have sources.

pvaldes14• 11 years ago

Dozens, maybe thousands of european salmon farming small companies vanished about 15 years ago and dumping was the final nail in the coffin. I could tell you some histories that producers said to me, but all is a little more complex than that. In the last 10 years we have a big recession in Europe by the scam. You can not expect a lot of regrowth inside Europe.

We have also two big and destructive tsunamis: Indonesia 2005 and Japan 2011. Ironically the banda-aceh tsunami that wipped entire villages favoured a vigorous regrowth of the aquaculture sector from India to Philipines because: 1-the fisher float was distroyed and 2-survivors were mortally afraid of working at the ocean. The sector in Japan have enough economical muscle to survive practically unscathed to the 2011 disaster. Another consequence was a renewed interest of the investors in South-America; and of course China is growing at at impressive "bigger-better-faster" pace that the rest of the world, as always. Aquaculture of trout and salmon in the south of europe is currently frozen and probably will never recover

shadowzero313• 11 years ago

Canada is alright with PNW salmon farming, but the US is not. The biggest concern is protecting the native salmon runs, especially against the risks of disease, drugs, and general filth building up in the farms and contaminating things.

mmphosis• 11 years ago

Canadians are NOT alright with this practice. Corporations from Norway have industrial pens of Atlantic salmon in Pacific waters within Canada. This is not just a concern, the items you list are problems today, as well as pollution from the pens, and over-fishing of traditional stocks to provide feed for the farmed fish.

Without the public's knowledge because these deals and the details within these documents that are being signed are kept secret, and without the consent of most Canadians, politicians in Canada have signed off on foreign corporations extracting resources and exporting profits from Canada -- and if we try to stop you, you can sue our government and collect even more money.

kijin• 11 years ago

The fact that the Norwegians had to freeze all of their surplus salmon probably helped, too. Freezing kills parasites, eliminating the #1 reason the Japanese didn't want to eat raw salmon.

Nowadays, most salmon stays frozen until a few hours before it goes on your sushi. Salmon is uniquely suited for freezing/thawing because its high fat content helps it retain texture. Freezing also has the side effect of giving salmon a relatively long shelf life, making it readily available in parts of the world that are thousands of miles away from actual salmon sources.

varjag• 11 years ago

The only reason Norwegian salmon getting frozen is transportation. Domestically, it is sold chilled near exclusively. Well and in a few smoked/fermented variants certainly.

jpatokal2• 11 years ago

To this day, the salmon in Japanese sushi restaurants is always labeled サーモン "saamon", which is known to be imported and is OK to eat raw; and never 鮭 "s(h)ake", which is (usually) local and always salted and cooked first -- even though ''shake'' as a term covers all types of salmons.

greggman• 11 years ago

I've been to plenty of sushi restaurants in Japan where it's labelled 鮭 and pronounced "shake". No idea if that means it was local salmon

klunger• 11 years ago

I lived there for two years and clearly remember it being labelled as 鮭 (while painstakingly learning the words and characters too for different common foods as well). Granted, this was about 10 years ago, so maybe it has changed?

jpatokal2• 11 years ago

In a sushi restaurant? Of course there are lots of 鮭 dishes in izakayas and such, but I've never seen any in a sushi restaurant.

jmadsen• 11 years ago

Interesting! Lived in Japan a long time, and always half-wondered why it was "salmon" for sushi & "sake" for everything else but never asked.

filvdg• 11 years ago

When I lived in Argentina we would call Sushi restaurants "Salmon shops" as they would never serve Tuna, it would be 95% salmon and some minute pieces of white fish.

pvaldes14• 11 years ago

Those are raised in Chile probably, the american productor of Salmon. Is the same as Norway for European market (and often farms belong to Norwegian or Norway/Chile mixed companies).

TazeTSchnitzel2• 11 years ago

productor

You're probably looking for the English work 'producer'.

henriquemaia• 11 years ago

How I read:

How Norway Created _Salman Rushdie_.

kzrdude• 11 years ago

That's an equally valid reading. The author is dead, after all. ;-)

unusximmortalis• 11 years ago

Well THANK you Norway!!! I simply LOVE sushi salmon, raw salmon. If it wasn't for you who knows if I would've got this pleasure :)

suryon• 11 years ago

Screw the sushi. Kimbab is the new hot thing.

_lbaq2• 11 years ago

Norwegian farmed salmon are among the biggest sources of food-borne contaminants in a normal diet. It contains four times as much dioxin as the highest permissible limit for meat, eggs and milk.

hellofunk4• 11 years ago

Apparently this warning has been lifted:

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/eats/norway-farmed-sal...

_lbaq2• 11 years ago

Go for wild catched cod (for example) from the Atlantic or Pacific instead, the food given to the Salmon contains large quantities of fish caught in the Baltic sea which is more or less unfit for human consumption.

GlennS• 11 years ago

I do think that smoked salmon makes better sushi than raw.

pvaldes14• 11 years ago

Probably. I remember a wild salmon smoked with fir wood and with entire pepper grains in a small village in Sweden that was absolutely memorable. My parents sniffed the smoke, entered automatically in bloodhound mode and find a fisherman that was working in a lake beach and sell them one.

I like also the raw but can come in several different qualities. Some are very good, other not so.

ncnc• 11 years ago

Most of the cultivated salmon is actually containing significant amounts of heavy metals (due to the sea fish they get fed). And it is also given large amounts of medication to prevent sickness and parasites. This all ends up on our plates... I love salmon, but have almost fully stopped eating it, lacking a trusted source. Also because the salmon get fed with seafish, cultivating them actually contributes to overfishing the oceans. There is a german documentary about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_Sl_wjiOyI

sigma2015• 11 years ago

the overfishing problem you mention is also addressed in "Cowspiracy" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3302820/) which I highly recommend. Since few days available on Netflix Germany.

cpach• 11 years ago

Fascinating! Here's another, longer article about this phenomenon: http://www.nortrade.com/sectors/articles/norways-introductio...

TheMagicHorsey• 11 years ago

There was actually a very sensible rule followed in China and Japan about eating raw fish. You only ate sea fish raw, while freshwater fish were always cooked.

There's a good rationale behind this. Freshwater fish tend to carry parasites that can cross the species boundary between fish and human. Whereas, sea fish do not tend to carry such parasites. You can understand the reason for that based on natural selection. Its an exceedingly rare event for a sea fish to be eaten by a land mammal (at least it was on the scale of evolutionary time before modern times), so most parasites of sea fish have not evolved a mechanism to exist in land mammal bodies. Whereas fresh water fish are often eaten by land mammals, and so many strains of parasites have adapted to make a smooth transfer from fish to land mammal body.

Its very sensible NOT to eat raw Salmon. Although they end up in the sea, they have two phases of life in bodies of fresh water where they can pick up parasites that can transfer to a human host.

pvaldes14• 11 years ago

Is because Diphyllobothriasis, cestode larvaes from freshwater fishes that can be very dangerous for humans; but the fish metazoan parasite that send more sushi lovers to the hospital is marine in fact.

Anisakiasis by roundworm larvae in raw fish or squid normally is not a big problem but is painful, and can lead to serious health issues sometimes. Any competent japanese chef will know how to deal with it. European law obliges to restaurants to frozen all fish destined to be served as sushi just for this.

rsync• 11 years ago

"European law obliges to restaurants to frozen all fish destined to be served as sushi just for this."

Really ? All fish served as sushi in Europe has been previously frozen ?

JacobJans• 11 years ago

Only eat raw salmon that has been flash frozen. This will kill the pesky parasites, according to the chef at a sushi restaurant I used to frequent.

cmclaughlin• 11 years ago

My favorite sushi chef lightly smokes his salmon.

sovande2• 11 years ago

That's why this was such an interesting story, battling prejudice and ancient folk wisdom is no simple task. Here's a typical Norwegian salmon farm http://i0.wp.com/blogg.seafood.no/wp-content/uploads/2013/02.... This is a sea-water farm and the fish is vaccinated early on and live a healthy antibiotics free life until they end up on your sushi (sour-tasting rice).

orik• 11 years ago

fish farms had just gone commercial in the 70's but hadn't grown that much at the time. the excess of high quality fish was wild salmon.

in the 70's in norway (and in alaska, can't speak about anywhere else) commercial fishing was in it's prime.

you can read more about the history of norwegian aquaculture here. http://www.svt.ntnu.no/iso/anders.skonhoft/Marine%20Policy%2...

jinushaun• 11 years ago

The more you know…

The article mentions salmon being responsible for the popularity of sushi globally. I actually prefer salmon sushi over tuna sushi by far. In fact, if it wasn't for salmon, I probably would've never like sushi. My first few experiences were with tuna and I hated it each time.

e12e• 11 years ago

Ironically, a large part of Norwegian Salmon is now owned by Mitsubishi: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/22/mitsubishi-to-buy-sal...

pvaldes14• 11 years ago

Didn't know, but i'm not suprised. The history is much more interesting in fact. They seem to have invented the fishcoin with mediterranean resources:

(2009): http://www.worldfishingtoday.com/news/default.asp?nyId=3387

(2013): http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-rigney/japan-bluefin-tuna...

How Norway Created Salmon Sushi

Related Stories