Sounds like the Canadian Food Inspection agency screwed the town out of spite. Like they had a target on Ngo's back. Anyone have more details? From the linked Eater article:
>He suggests that a prior conflict with the CFIA over product labeling motivated them to close the factory before the inspection began. Ngo claims that he had been vocal about their interactions, and speculates “if they shut [us] down, nobody makes any complaints anymore.”
>After the government-run lab found Ngo’s product to be safe, he went on to win a court case and an appeal against the government. Even after those victories, the CFIA moved to restrict the sales of his product to the province of Newfoundland. “If I sell there, who will use my product?” Ngo says, pointing out the small population of Newfoundland and its non-existent Vietnamese community. “I could sell maybe one or two cases a month[...] we can’t survive.” The CFIA declined to comment, citing the amount of time that has passed since filing its initial complaint.
They could have stopped production in the moldy factory but allowed sale of the remaining product.
I don’t think he was targeted but he met the reality of bureaucracy. One agency actually funded him and approved the building and allowed him to operate for 11 years. Another agency said you can’t operate or sell because of the growing mold. Another agency said dump the forbidden fish sauce in the sewer. Another agency said to bury it.
There's a farmers market here in Zurich where some Italians drive up and sell Italian products like cheeses, sausages, etc. but one thing I buy from them I've never seen anywhere else - they are rotten salted anchovies packed with peppercorns. Stink super bad and are falling apart but when you're making a sauce you drop one in and the anchovy dissolves and delivers tons of umami - glutamates - and you no longer smell the rotten fish smell. I'm sure professional chefs must know about these.
I keep them in baggies in the freezer so that they don't stink up the fridge.
I mean, instead of investing so much effort to get glutamate into your food, why not use MSG directly? Sounds like much less hassle? Reminds me of the time when Big Food over here in Germany replaced MSG with "yeast extract" so they could claim that their foods contained no artificial flavor enhancers (although the yeast extract also contains a lot of glutamate).
Its also a common misconception that all glutamates are MSG (thats one salt of glutamate) and that all umami compounds are simple glutamate salts.
So while MSG is an excellent "neutral" umami ingredient, fermented products like this have a whole host of complex flavors that are often very desirable beyond just their glutamate salt.
While your comment is true, it is reductive. While celery seed does in fact contain nitrates which are turned into nitrites, it’s the next step that’s important. Unlike synthetic sodium nitrite, celery seeds contain vitamin C which acts as an antioxidant that converts the nitrites into harmless nitric oxide whereas the synthetic sodium nitrite is converted into harmful nitrosamines.
The subtle differences in how our bodies process synthetic vs natural ingredients significantly impacts our bodies and health.
They can't actually label it "nitrate free", only a superficially sounding term like "no nitrates added", with the hope that people (like you) think it's the same as "nitrate free".
Rotten? Do you have any more info about this product, even a name? Salted anchovies are common in at least Spain, Italy & Portugal (and you usually rinse off the excess salt and optionally store them in olive oil for a while before consuming), but I've never seen a "rotten" anchovy...
Instead of "rotten" I should have probably used "fermented". They're dark brown, not dry but not in a liquid, individual anchovies that are starting to fall apart. They smell like a stronger version of fish sauce.
Since this is just salted, fermented fish, which the scientist in the article claims he would like to taste, why does it need to be buried in plastic? Why not slowly pour it into a sewer, over the course of several months?
>Perhaps the most promising and most discouraging event for the factory happened in 2016. That year, the provincial government approved a cleanup plan, and a private company began the process. But the cleanup was halted soon after it started when it became clear that the contractors were dumping several dozen vats of rotten fish sauce directly into the ocean. According to Ryan, the provincial government ordered the factory’s drains to be blocked to prevent any more sauce from seeping into the ocean.
Sewers go places, and it is nearly a million liters of extremely concentrated stinky. If you do this, you take a single location source of stinky and smear it over a much larger set of locations that will then ALL be extremely stinky, in a way that isn’t easily cleaned with water as the fats and oils (also extremely stinky!) are of course not soluble.
The solution to pollution is dilution was a philosophy prior to modern environmental protection laws, which were a reaction to the fact that we were absolutely destroying all kinds of ecosystems, even when we thought we were just diluting toxins down to nothing.
I'd say dump it in the ocean, but I don't guess any boat will take it. Still, sounds like they're going to make the area around the landfill stink forever.
Isn't the ocean filled with salt and already knows how to biologically degrade fish? I sort of think that you could deposit this at sea somehow, just need to spread it out sufficiently.
I am sure I am overlooking something that would lead to an unintended ecological disaster.
I wanted to crack a joke that Swede's do like their stinky fermented fish, why not sell to them… But I figured why not see if other cultures might also like it, and was floored with how many there were: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermented_fish
Slightly Offtopic but the voice in the embedded youtube Video is so sounds so unnatural and creepy.
I guess its AI generated and no one bothered to check the end result.
After 20 years of legal battles abandoned factory containing tanks of rotting fish in St Mary’s NL is getting cleaned up, paid for by provincial taxpayers.
From a random google search I got this report https://uvadoc.uva.es/bitstream/handle/10324/18877/TFG-I-468... (mostly in Spanish, with an English abstract). It looks serious and as far as I understand it makes sense. They recommend to add iodine to burn/oxidize the trimethylamine or use bacteria and bubbles or air/oxygen, or a mix or bacteria+algae+light that produces the oxygen inside the mix. It looks like without an active source of oxidizer, the mix will be stinky for years.
They should blow it up like they blew up that whale carcass. Nothing could possibly go wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CLumsir34
Sounds like the Canadian Food Inspection agency screwed the town out of spite. Like they had a target on Ngo's back. Anyone have more details? From the linked Eater article:
>He suggests that a prior conflict with the CFIA over product labeling motivated them to close the factory before the inspection began. Ngo claims that he had been vocal about their interactions, and speculates “if they shut [us] down, nobody makes any complaints anymore.”
>After the government-run lab found Ngo’s product to be safe, he went on to win a court case and an appeal against the government. Even after those victories, the CFIA moved to restrict the sales of his product to the province of Newfoundland. “If I sell there, who will use my product?” Ngo says, pointing out the small population of Newfoundland and its non-existent Vietnamese community. “I could sell maybe one or two cases a month[...] we can’t survive.” The CFIA declined to comment, citing the amount of time that has passed since filing its initial complaint.
They could have stopped production in the moldy factory but allowed sale of the remaining product.
I don’t think he was targeted but he met the reality of bureaucracy. One agency actually funded him and approved the building and allowed him to operate for 11 years. Another agency said you can’t operate or sell because of the growing mold. Another agency said dump the forbidden fish sauce in the sewer. Another agency said to bury it.
There's a farmers market here in Zurich where some Italians drive up and sell Italian products like cheeses, sausages, etc. but one thing I buy from them I've never seen anywhere else - they are rotten salted anchovies packed with peppercorns. Stink super bad and are falling apart but when you're making a sauce you drop one in and the anchovy dissolves and delivers tons of umami - glutamates - and you no longer smell the rotten fish smell. I'm sure professional chefs must know about these.
I keep them in baggies in the freezer so that they don't stink up the fridge.
I mean, instead of investing so much effort to get glutamate into your food, why not use MSG directly? Sounds like much less hassle? Reminds me of the time when Big Food over here in Germany replaced MSG with "yeast extract" so they could claim that their foods contained no artificial flavor enhancers (although the yeast extract also contains a lot of glutamate).
Its also a common misconception that all glutamates are MSG (thats one salt of glutamate) and that all umami compounds are simple glutamate salts.
So while MSG is an excellent "neutral" umami ingredient, fermented products like this have a whole host of complex flavors that are often very desirable beyond just their glutamate salt.
Because people like the fish flavor ?
Same reason we use tomato paste instead of a MSG + food coloring or parmesan instead of MSG + some protein I would say.
Like labelling bacon nitrate free while also including celery seed something-or-another that is... Just nitrates.
While your comment is true, it is reductive. While celery seed does in fact contain nitrates which are turned into nitrites, it’s the next step that’s important. Unlike synthetic sodium nitrite, celery seeds contain vitamin C which acts as an antioxidant that converts the nitrites into harmless nitric oxide whereas the synthetic sodium nitrite is converted into harmful nitrosamines.
The subtle differences in how our bodies process synthetic vs natural ingredients significantly impacts our bodies and health.
They can't actually label it "nitrate free", only a superficially sounding term like "no nitrates added", with the hope that people (like you) think it's the same as "nitrate free".
Rotten? Do you have any more info about this product, even a name? Salted anchovies are common in at least Spain, Italy & Portugal (and you usually rinse off the excess salt and optionally store them in olive oil for a while before consuming), but I've never seen a "rotten" anchovy...
Instead of "rotten" I should have probably used "fermented". They're dark brown, not dry but not in a liquid, individual anchovies that are starting to fall apart. They smell like a stronger version of fish sauce.
Since this is just salted, fermented fish, which the scientist in the article claims he would like to taste, why does it need to be buried in plastic? Why not slowly pour it into a sewer, over the course of several months?
From the linked Eater article:
>Perhaps the most promising and most discouraging event for the factory happened in 2016. That year, the provincial government approved a cleanup plan, and a private company began the process. But the cleanup was halted soon after it started when it became clear that the contractors were dumping several dozen vats of rotten fish sauce directly into the ocean. According to Ryan, the provincial government ordered the factory’s drains to be blocked to prevent any more sauce from seeping into the ocean.
https://www.eater.com/2019/5/23/18634704/st-marys-irish-loop...
I think dumping it slowly would be better than a hazardous waste landfill, but government bureaucracy is not capable of handling this situation.
Put it on a boat, navigate to an area with a current away from any land and then slowly release it
Take it outside the environment.
Or dump it in a volcano.
What's out there?
More environment
Sewers go places, and it is nearly a million liters of extremely concentrated stinky. If you do this, you take a single location source of stinky and smear it over a much larger set of locations that will then ALL be extremely stinky, in a way that isn’t easily cleaned with water as the fats and oils (also extremely stinky!) are of course not soluble.
> as the fats and oils (also extremely stinky!) are of course not soluble.
Just use a lot of Dawn dish detergent
Instead the stinky will be spread through time.
The solution to pollution is dilution, and the ocean would metabolize it away fairly quickly.
The solution to pollution is dilution was a philosophy prior to modern environmental protection laws, which were a reaction to the fact that we were absolutely destroying all kinds of ecosystems, even when we thought we were just diluting toxins down to nothing.
I'd say dump it in the ocean, but I don't guess any boat will take it. Still, sounds like they're going to make the area around the landfill stink forever.
It’s organic solids. Just get it to the ocean. It’s not like it’s crude oil or volatile chemicals.
The solution to pollution is dilution.
It might not always be true, but it is here.
Isn't the ocean filled with salt and already knows how to biologically degrade fish? I sort of think that you could deposit this at sea somehow, just need to spread it out sufficiently.
I am sure I am overlooking something that would lead to an unintended ecological disaster.
"just need to spread it out sufficiently"
Use a crop duster type aircraft - what could go wrong?
Edit: Growing up in a fishing village I'm fully aware of the potential for WMD level stench that the fishing industry is capable of generating.
I wanted to crack a joke that Swede's do like their stinky fermented fish, why not sell to them… But I figured why not see if other cultures might also like it, and was floored with how many there were: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermented_fish
Slightly Offtopic but the voice in the embedded youtube Video is so sounds so unnatural and creepy. I guess its AI generated and no one bothered to check the end result.
I can confirm that the voice is from a real person [1].
Search Susan Bennett [1], also known as “The Siri Voice”, online.
Also, worth mentioning Carolyn Hopkins [2], the voice of Canadian airports.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/behind-the-voices...
[2] https://soundcloud.com/on_air-2/susan-bennett-the-voice-of-s...
[3] https://soundcloud.com/on_air-2/carolyn-hopkins-carolyn-hopk...
> But this person who ended up becoming my wife, she's like, "I love fish sauce. I need more of it in my life."
Possibly the least expected ending to that article, and very heartwarming.
> I would 100 percent taste the forbidden fish sauce. I would do it for science. My wife would kill me if I'm not already dead.
Count me in.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/st-mary...
tl;dr
After 20 years of legal battles abandoned factory containing tanks of rotting fish in St Mary’s NL is getting cleaned up, paid for by provincial taxpayers.
After 20 years this hasn't completely rotted and scentless? I need to read the article.
If the goo is too salty, probably bacterias can grow enough to eat the cause of the bad smell, in particular https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimethylamine
From a random google search I got this report https://uvadoc.uva.es/bitstream/handle/10324/18877/TFG-I-468... (mostly in Spanish, with an English abstract). It looks serious and as far as I understand it makes sense. They recommend to add iodine to burn/oxidize the trimethylamine or use bacteria and bubbles or air/oxygen, or a mix or bacteria+algae+light that produces the oxygen inside the mix. It looks like without an active source of oxidizer, the mix will be stinky for years.