Thought I'd post this over here too.
Not sure if you get Basa in Luxor or not.
Do you eat this frozen fish called Pangas ? ( Pangasius, Basa, Vietnamese River Cobbler, White Catfish, Gray Sole )
It is Industrially farmed in Vietnam along the Mekong River , Pangas or whatever they're calling it, has only been recently introduced to the French market.
However, in a very short amount of time, it has grown in popularity in France .
The French are slurping up Pangas like it's their last meal of soup noodles. They are very, very affordable (cheap), are sold in fillets with no bones and they have a neutral (bland) flavor and texture; many would compare it to cod and sole, only much cheaper. But as tasty as some people may find it, there's, in fact, something hugely unsavory about it. I hope the information provided here will serve as very important information for you and your future choices. Here's why I think it is better left in the shops (and not on your dinner plates).
1. 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. To note: a friend lab tests these fish and tells us to avoid eating them due to high amounts of contamination. Regardless of the reports and recommendations against selling them, the supermarkets still sell them to the general public knowing they are contaminated.
2. They freeze Pangas in contaminated river water.
3. Pangas are not environmentally sustainable, a most unsustainable food you could possibly eat - 'Buy local' means creating the least amount of environmental harm as possible. This is the very opposite end of the spectrum of sustainable consumerism. Pangas are raised in Vietnam . Pangas are fed food that comes from Peru ( more on that below ), their hormones ( which are injected into the female Pangas ) come from China . ( More about that below ) and finally, they are transported from Vietnam to France . That's not just a giant carbon foot print, that's a carbon continent of a foot print.
4. There's nothing natural about Pangas - They're fed dead fish remnants and bones, dried and ground into a flour, from South America , manioc (cassava) and residue from soy 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 a speed of light ( practically! ) : 4 times faster than in nature So it makes you wonder what exactly is in their food? Your guess is as good as mine.
5. 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 pee, so if you don't, good for you, but just consider the rest of the reasons to NOT eat it.
6. Don't be lured in by insanely cheap price of Pangas. Is it worth risking your health and the health of your family?
7. Buying Pangas supports unscrupulous, greedy evil corporations and food conglomerates that don't care about the health and well-being of human beings. They only are concerned about selling as many pangas as possible to unsuspecting consumers. These corporations only care about selling and making more money at whatever cost to the public.
8. Pangas will make you sick- If (for reasons in no.1 above) you don't get immediately ill with vomiting, diarrhea and effects from severe food poisoning, congratulations, you have an iron stomach! But you're still ingesting POISON not poisson.
Final important note: Because of the prodigious amount of availability of Pangas, be warned that they will certainly find their way into other foods: surimi (those pressedfish things, imitation crab sticks), fish sticks, fish terrines, and probably in some pet foods.
http://simplelife4u.blogspot.com/2009/06.....river.html
Basa, Pangasius fish fillet danger!!
Moderators: DJKeefy, 4u Network
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Glyphdoctor
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I investigated all the pros and cons of it before buying it as I had read some alarming stuff about it too but decided the hysteria was overblown. It is insanely cheap, not the best tasting fish you ever will eat in your life, but the taste is good especially considering how little it costs. I certainly expected a lot worse and was pretty pleasantly surprised. It makes a good fish curry.
I too find the fish excellent value. I poach it, saute it, fry it, excellent. I get it regularly at Arkwright's. I see it comes in through an Australian corporation. My SUSPICION is that they DO have quality control and know what they are offering, and that it is safe; rather than get into a massive liability mess.
We make a living by what we get;
we make a life by what we give.
we make a life by what we give.
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Hurghadapat
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And as i said in another post we can buy it here in england and think it will have been well tested before being allowed in this country------------I hope as eat a lot of it and haven't started to glow in the dark or noticing any other symptoms.so hope gov.health dept. have done their work correctly. 
always keep your words soft and sweet just incase you have to eat them
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pinkmagic
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I almost bought some of this fish the other week but changed my mind as I wasn't sure what it tasted like.
Some of the farming practices you mention sound pretty gross but so are they for much of the food we eat. Short of becoming totally self sufficient, if we thought about it all too much we would all starve!
Some of the farming practices you mention sound pretty gross but so are they for much of the food we eat. Short of becoming totally self sufficient, if we thought about it all too much we would all starve!
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Hurghadapat
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Winged Isis
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We test it till it screams here, because of our strict quarantine laws, if nothing else.
What really p***** Australians off is that it is allowed into the country at all, considering we are surrounded by the best fish in the world, and have an abundance of species! Poor local fishermen! There was a real outcry when it was discovered Basa was being passed off as more expensive species; now it must be labelled as Basa.
What really p***** Australians off is that it is allowed into the country at all, considering we are surrounded by the best fish in the world, and have an abundance of species! Poor local fishermen! There was a real outcry when it was discovered Basa was being passed off as more expensive species; now it must be labelled as Basa.
Carpe diem! 
Don't panic folks 
Seems more like 'sour grapes'.
The NY Times: "Americans and Vietnamese Fighting Over Catfish"
By SETH MYDANS
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, Nov. 3 — This time, the Vietnamese have invaded the United States, with catfish, and a bitter war has broken out for access to America's frying pans.
The battlefield is the free market, new terrain for Vietnam, which gave in to American pressure last year and signed a trade agreement that knocks down trade barriers in return for access to American markets.
No sooner was the agreement signed than the Catfish Farmers of America, an industry group, gave the Vietnamese a quick lesson in the rough world of the free market.
Their message: competitors will do what it takes to make a profit, even if that means throwing those trade barriers back up.
Vietnam does not have a great deal to sell to the United States, but seafood products are near the top of the list, and they have done well.
Inexpensive Vietnamese catfish imports have soared, from 575,000 pounds four years ago to 20 million pounds now, capturing as much as 20 percent of America's frozen catfish fillet market.
More and more of the fish, grown in gigantic river pens in the Mekong Delta, are finding themselves on American barbecues, supplanting home-grown catfish raised in the Mississippi Delta.
The American fishermen have fought back, contending that the Vietnamese fish are not really catfish and persuading Congress to bar the Vietnamese from using that name. The American group is also pressing hard for import duties based on anti-dumping laws.
They have begun a hardball publicity campaign aimed at buyers, calling Vietnamese catfish dirty, even toxic, and definitely un-American.
The encounter seems to have stunned Vietnam, where as many as 400,000 catfish farmers work in an industry that sends about one-third of its $1.8 billion in exports to the United States.
Vietnamese government statements have condemned the moves as "an unfair protectionist act," a violation of the new trade pact and even "a new war, not to fight Communism but to combat Vietnamese catfish."
Apart from the cries of outrage, the Vietnamese are watching and learning.
"We regard these problems as first-hand experience in negotiation, doing business with American partners and understanding United States law," said Le Phuoc Hai, a Vietnamese trade official.
In Washington, Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who was once a prisoner of war in Vietnam and who later pressed Vietnam to open its markets, sounded shamefaced. He called the catfish war "a troubling example of the very protectionism we have urged the Vietnamese to abandon."
The victims of a cut in American imports would be fishermen like Nguyen Van Dam, 42, who grew up on his father's floating catfish farm and now produces thousands of tons of fish a year, mostly for sale overseas.
In their gigantic underwater pen in Chau Doc in the Mekong Delta, thousands of catfish thrash to the surface as Mr. Dam tosses in their daily feed.
His production costs are lower than those of American fishermen, he said, because Vietnamese labor is cheaper and because the flowing water of the river washes the fish.
The first attack by American catfish farmers was semantic. They argued that only the North American species — known as Ictaluridae — are genuine catfish, though indeed there are more than 2,000 species of catfish.
Congress took their point and barred the Vietnamese from using the word catfish even though their imports look and taste the same. It then enacted another law requiring meat and seafood products to be labeled with their country of origin.
That offered some good debating points for American catfish producers. "They've grown up flapping around in third world rivers and dining on whatever they can get their fins on," reads one advertisement issued by the catfish lobby.
Representative Marion Berry, an Arkansas Democrat whose state is one of the three leading producers of catfish, offered the novel idea that Vietnamese fish are contaminated by the defoliant Agent Orange, which was sprayed by the United States during the war. "That stuff doesn't break down," he said.
The next step in the campaign against the imports is to persuade Congress that Vietnam is "dumping" its catfish in the American market at artificially low prices.
A delegation from the Department of Commerce visited here last month to investigate the claim and is to issue a preliminary decision in December on whether to impose anti-dumping duties. The department is not scheduled to make its final ruling until February.
In the meantime, the Vietnamese seem to be learning to play the game.
Government officials met with the Commerce Department delegation last month and argued that their fish were "absolutely not dumped in the United States market or in any other market in the world," said Phan Thuy Thanh, a government spokeswoman.
Nguyen Thi Hong Minh, Vietnam's deputy minister for fisheries, joined the verbal combat with gusto.
The labeling law is itself un-American, she said. It is intended "to protect the interests of a relatively small group of wealthy catfish industrialists at the expense of the free trade spirit and the best interests of the United States consumer."
http://www.vietnamembassy-usa.org/news/s.....1106093944
Seems more like 'sour grapes'.
The NY Times: "Americans and Vietnamese Fighting Over Catfish"
By SETH MYDANS
HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, Nov. 3 — This time, the Vietnamese have invaded the United States, with catfish, and a bitter war has broken out for access to America's frying pans.
The battlefield is the free market, new terrain for Vietnam, which gave in to American pressure last year and signed a trade agreement that knocks down trade barriers in return for access to American markets.
No sooner was the agreement signed than the Catfish Farmers of America, an industry group, gave the Vietnamese a quick lesson in the rough world of the free market.
Their message: competitors will do what it takes to make a profit, even if that means throwing those trade barriers back up.
Vietnam does not have a great deal to sell to the United States, but seafood products are near the top of the list, and they have done well.
Inexpensive Vietnamese catfish imports have soared, from 575,000 pounds four years ago to 20 million pounds now, capturing as much as 20 percent of America's frozen catfish fillet market.
More and more of the fish, grown in gigantic river pens in the Mekong Delta, are finding themselves on American barbecues, supplanting home-grown catfish raised in the Mississippi Delta.
The American fishermen have fought back, contending that the Vietnamese fish are not really catfish and persuading Congress to bar the Vietnamese from using that name. The American group is also pressing hard for import duties based on anti-dumping laws.
They have begun a hardball publicity campaign aimed at buyers, calling Vietnamese catfish dirty, even toxic, and definitely un-American.
The encounter seems to have stunned Vietnam, where as many as 400,000 catfish farmers work in an industry that sends about one-third of its $1.8 billion in exports to the United States.
Vietnamese government statements have condemned the moves as "an unfair protectionist act," a violation of the new trade pact and even "a new war, not to fight Communism but to combat Vietnamese catfish."
Apart from the cries of outrage, the Vietnamese are watching and learning.
"We regard these problems as first-hand experience in negotiation, doing business with American partners and understanding United States law," said Le Phuoc Hai, a Vietnamese trade official.
In Washington, Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who was once a prisoner of war in Vietnam and who later pressed Vietnam to open its markets, sounded shamefaced. He called the catfish war "a troubling example of the very protectionism we have urged the Vietnamese to abandon."
The victims of a cut in American imports would be fishermen like Nguyen Van Dam, 42, who grew up on his father's floating catfish farm and now produces thousands of tons of fish a year, mostly for sale overseas.
In their gigantic underwater pen in Chau Doc in the Mekong Delta, thousands of catfish thrash to the surface as Mr. Dam tosses in their daily feed.
His production costs are lower than those of American fishermen, he said, because Vietnamese labor is cheaper and because the flowing water of the river washes the fish.
The first attack by American catfish farmers was semantic. They argued that only the North American species — known as Ictaluridae — are genuine catfish, though indeed there are more than 2,000 species of catfish.
Congress took their point and barred the Vietnamese from using the word catfish even though their imports look and taste the same. It then enacted another law requiring meat and seafood products to be labeled with their country of origin.
That offered some good debating points for American catfish producers. "They've grown up flapping around in third world rivers and dining on whatever they can get their fins on," reads one advertisement issued by the catfish lobby.
Representative Marion Berry, an Arkansas Democrat whose state is one of the three leading producers of catfish, offered the novel idea that Vietnamese fish are contaminated by the defoliant Agent Orange, which was sprayed by the United States during the war. "That stuff doesn't break down," he said.
The next step in the campaign against the imports is to persuade Congress that Vietnam is "dumping" its catfish in the American market at artificially low prices.
A delegation from the Department of Commerce visited here last month to investigate the claim and is to issue a preliminary decision in December on whether to impose anti-dumping duties. The department is not scheduled to make its final ruling until February.
In the meantime, the Vietnamese seem to be learning to play the game.
Government officials met with the Commerce Department delegation last month and argued that their fish were "absolutely not dumped in the United States market or in any other market in the world," said Phan Thuy Thanh, a government spokeswoman.
Nguyen Thi Hong Minh, Vietnam's deputy minister for fisheries, joined the verbal combat with gusto.
The labeling law is itself un-American, she said. It is intended "to protect the interests of a relatively small group of wealthy catfish industrialists at the expense of the free trade spirit and the best interests of the United States consumer."
http://www.vietnamembassy-usa.org/news/s.....1106093944
"I think I may have swine flu…….I've come out in rashers "
Just seems like an awful lot of dust stirred up over a blog which seems to be unsubstantiated in the first place.
When the forum publishes a rumor - is there any way it could be so identified - as opposed to something accredited or cited?
Just seems like it would be easier on everybody - and their blood pressure!!! LOL!!!
When the forum publishes a rumor - is there any way it could be so identified - as opposed to something accredited or cited?
Just seems like it would be easier on everybody - and their blood pressure!!! LOL!!!
We make a living by what we get;
we make a life by what we give.
we make a life by what we give.
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Glyphdoctor
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Hurghadapat
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Ph................w Ebikatsu you had me worried for awhile 
but i did go onto Youngs web site and check their policies and hardly think they would be going against these by selling fish full of poison and therefore leaving themselves wideopen to god knows what.So i shall continue to buy,eat and enjoy basa 
but i did go onto Youngs web site and check their policies and hardly think they would be going against these by selling fish full of poison and therefore leaving themselves wideopen to god knows what.So i shall continue to buy,eat and enjoy basa always keep your words soft and sweet just incase you have to eat them
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Hurghadapat
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Just had a check in my freezer so see what the weight was of the pack i bought awhile back,it's 800grm and cost £9.99 so is quite cheap in comparison to other fish Was looking at some fresh halibut the other day was nearly £30 a kilo so thats all i did............LOOK
Was looking at some fresh halibut the other day was nearly £30 a kilo so thats all i did............LOOK always keep your words soft and sweet just incase you have to eat them
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Glyphdoctor
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Glyphdoctor
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Hurghadapat
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And that is the reason Glyph why i also bought a lot of it while i was living in egypt as opposed to paying about 35-40Le a kilo for other fish especially as it was filleted love fish better than meat but find the bones a b it hard to handle and also it is a bit like the lemon sole that we pay a lot for here in england
love fish better than meat but find the bones a b it hard to handle and also it is a bit like the lemon sole that we pay a lot for here in england always keep your words soft and sweet just incase you have to eat them
I haven't seen it here in Dallas, but that might only be that I haven't looked for it. If it is competition for the "catfish" ppl, then no worries as I am not fond of "catfish" taste. Much prefer tilapia as an inexpensive rather bland white fish that cooks up quite nicely . . . a little feta cheese tossed into the pan to melt down a bit into a sauce makes it very tasty, lol. Halibut is great but too expensive.
CATHERINE
I fell in to a burning ring of fire . . .
I fell in to a burning ring of fire . . .
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