ave any of you ever eaten any species of catfish? I haven’t,
although I know many people who have. As I did the grocery
shopping last week in our local supermarket, I found myself
standing at the fishmonger’s counter, wishing that
smoked haddock wasn’t quite so expensive. I happened
to notice some smoked fillets of something labelled “Vietnamese
River Cobbler” - £6.99 per kg – less
than half the price of smoked haddock, one of my favourites.
I
asked the assistant behind the counter what sort of fish
it was - “a Cobbler fish”, she replied –
well, so much for their well known slogan - “Every
Little Helps”.
However, sitting at the computer
later that evening, I typed “River Cobbler”
into the Google search box and, guess what, it’s
a catfish - Pangasius. It appears that they are
farmed as a food fish in the Far East, where they are
called Pangas, and apparently, as well as being very cheap,
they are absolutely delicious. I was all fired up to go
and buy some, until, delving further into the World Wide
Web, I uncovered some rather chilling data about them,
and I have copied here a few scary facts, for your information:-
Pangas are teeming with
high levels of poisons and bacteria, (industrial
effluents, arsenic, and toxic and hazardous by-products
of the growing industrial sector, polychlorinated biphenyls
(PCBs), DDT and its metabolites (DDTs), metal contaminants,
chlordane-related compounds (CHLs), hexachlorocyclohexane
isomers (HCHs), and hexachlorobenzene (HCB)). The reasons
are that the Mekong River is one of the most polluted
rivers on the planet and this is where pangas are farmed
and industries along the river dump chemicals and industrial
waste directly into it. A laboratory test on these fish
showed high amounts of contamination. Despite the reports
and recommendations against eating Pangas, supermarkets
are still selling them to the general public knowing they
are contaminated.
There’s nothing natural
about Pangas - They’re fed dead fish remnants
and bones, dried and ground into a flour, from South America,
and also residue from soya and grains. This kind of nourishment
doesn’t even remotely resemble what they eat in
nature. But what it does resemble is the method of feeding
mad cows (cows were fed cows, remember?) What they feed
pangas is completely unregulated so there are most likely
other dangerous substances and hormones thrown into the
mix. The pangas grow at high speed - 4 times faster than
in nature…so it makes you wonder what exactly is
in their food?
Pangas are Injected with
Hormones Derived from Urine – I don’t
know how someone came up with this one out but they’ve
discovered that if they inject female Pangas with hormones
made from the dehydrated urine of pregnant women, the
female Pangas grow much quicker and produce eggs faster
(one Panga can lay approximately 500,000 eggs at one time).
Essentially, they’re injecting fish with hormones
(they come all of the way from a pharmaceutical company
in China) to speed up the process of growth and reproduction.
That isn’t good. Some of you might not mind eating
fish injected with dehydrated human pee but just consider
the rest of the reasons to NOT eat it.
Mmmm – maybe I’ll stick
to fish fingers........
Reference & Data : www.dietmindspirit.org
Read more here on the: TIMESONLINE
Here is another view from the BBC
Watchdog (editor)
Image credit : ©
Jean-Francois Helias @
