The Abandoned Fish Sauce Terrorizing a Small Canadian Town

Posted by ohjeez 2 days ago

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Comments

Comment by anon84873628 34 minutes ago

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.

Comment by rawgabbit 11 minutes ago

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.

Comment by Symbiote 1 hour ago

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?

Comment by anon84873628 43 minutes ago

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.

Comment by Tepix 24 minutes ago

Put it on a boat, navigate to an area with a current away from any land and then slowly release it

Comment by Waterluvian 22 minutes ago

Take it outside the environment.

Comment by rekoil 14 minutes ago

What's out there?

Comment by Lalabadie 5 minutes ago

More environment

Comment by sneak 48 minutes ago

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.

Comment by chuckadams 46 minutes ago

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.

Comment by anon84873628 41 minutes ago

Instead the stinky will be spread through time.

The solution to pollution is dilution, and the ocean would metabolize it away fairly quickly.

Comment by comrade1234 50 minutes ago

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.

Comment by dfxm12 15 minutes ago

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...

Comment by rob74 33 minutes ago

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).

Comment by PetitPrince 12 minutes ago

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.

Comment by pluralmonad 24 minutes ago

Like labelling bacon nitrate free while also including celery seed something-or-another that is... Just nitrates.

Comment by bhouston 42 minutes ago

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.

Comment by arethuza 39 minutes ago

"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.

Comment by cuechan 27 minutes ago

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.

Comment by guessmyname 18 minutes ago

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...

Comment by Y-bar 56 minutes ago

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

Comment by jonhohle 38 minutes ago

> 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.

Comment by wxw 37 minutes ago

> 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.

Comment by jt2190 1 hour ago

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.

Comment by Grazester 57 minutes ago

After 20 years this hasn't completely rotted and scentless? I need to read the article.