About the place where people recklessly eat puffer fish every day
(Baonghean.vn) - When it comes to puffer fish, everyone is afraid. However, the people of Nghi Tien commune, Nghi Loc district consider puffer fish a traditional specialty. Therefore, the exploitation, sale and use of this fish here is quite bustling.
Every morning, when fishing boats of fishermen from Nghi Tien commune reach the shore, just a few minutes later, groups of people, some with baskets and trays, display puffer fish for sale along the village road. Buyers also arrive very quickly. With just a few words of haggling, they buy all the puffer fish on display to eat.
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| Rows of puffer fish stalls are bustling every morning. Photo: Van Thanh |
The season for catching puffer fish starts in May and ends at the end of October of the lunar calendar. It is the beginning of the season so the fish are still small. A dozen puffer fish cost from 10,000 VND to 15,000 VND. Locals say that in a few months when the fish are big, the price will increase to 40,000 - 50,000 VND.
Nghi Tien coastal commune has nearly 140 fishing boats fishing inshore. In this season, in addition to traditional seafood exploitation, most of the local fishing boats take advantage of going out to sea to catch puffer fish. Every day, after catching squid and crabs in the open sea, they rest for a while, and at 4 a.m., fishermen take their boats out 1.5 km from shore to catch puffer fish. At 7 or 8 a.m., they return to shore. On average, each boat catches 300-400 puffer fish, which are sold for about 400,000 VND. All the puffer fish that come back are sold.
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| Puffer fish at the beginning of the season is priced at 10,000 - 15,000 VND/kg. Photo: Van Thanh |
The strange thing is that both the seller and the buyer guarantee that this puffer fish is not poisonous. According to Mr. Luu Dinh On - a fisherman in hamlet 9, Nghi Tien commune: "Poisonous puffer fish are box puffer fish, spiny puffer fish and flower puffer fish. The puffer fish exploited and sold here is rice puffer fish - a type of puffer fish that is safe to eat and has delicious meat. Poisonous puffer fish are usually found far out at sea. Occasionally, a few poisonous ones are caught and thrown away right at sea."
Mr. Hoang Van Dai in Hamlet 9, Nghi Tien Commune asserted: “Puffer fish is nutritious, everyone in this village eats it. The bigger the fish, the better it tastes. Anyone who has eaten it a few times is addicted. I eat puffer fish every day. Without it, meals are not delicious.” Even taking advantage of the hot weather, many people buy puffer fish, cut the meat, dry it and eat it gradually.
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| Tien Phong Beach - one of the places where fishermen's puffer fish boats dock. Photo: Van Thanh |
When asking the local food safety authority, Mr. Hoang Duc Nhien - Head of Nghi Tien Commune Health Station said: "Up to now, there has been no case of puffer fish poisoning. However, no one has confirmed that the puffer fish that people often eat is not poisonous. The station has advised the Commune People's Committee to propagate to help people have the right understanding about puffer fish so that they do not use this fish as food."
Mr. Tran Cong Oanh - Chairman of Nghi Tien Commune People's Committee said: "The commune government regularly propagates the ban on exploiting and trading puffer fish, and recommends not using puffer fish as food for people. The commune also places signs prohibiting the buying and selling of puffer fish at the market and at the beginning of the street; does not classify households that regularly buy and sell puffer fish as cultural families. The commune People's Committee has mobilized the police force many times to chase away cases of buying and selling puffer fish on the roadside. However, after chasing away one place, people sell in another place. When the police leave, everything goes back to normal."
With the excuse that "the whole village eats puffer fish", and no one has been poisoned by eating this type of fish, people in Nghi Tien still carelessly put puffer fish in their daily meals. But who dares to affirm that the puffer fish that people exploit, sell and eat is not poisonous and that puffer fish poisoning never happens, especially when the processing of fish is still careless and arbitrary.
In Vietnam, puffer fish is also known as toad fish, flower goby fish, chicken thigh fish,... Americans call it pufferfish, and the Japanese call it fugu fish. The fish's poison is concentrated in the skin, intestines, liver, abdominal muscles, seminal vesicles and most in the eggs, so the females are more poisonous than the males and especially during the breeding season, the poison is called tetrodotoxin. This is an extremely toxic neurotoxin, more than 1,200 times more toxic than cyanide. The poison of one fish is enough to kill 30 people. It is worth noting that the puffer fish itself cannot synthesize the toxin; the tetraodotoxin in puffer fish is synthesized by symbiotic bacteria, mainly the Pseudomonas and Vibrio groups, but some other species do. Therefore, if the puffer fish are kept in isolation, the toxin is not present. Normally, the toxin exists in fish in the form of the non-toxic protoxin tetrodomin. When the fish is spoiled or bruised, tetrodomin will transform into the toxic tetrodotoxin. Boiling at 1,000C for 6 hours will reduce tetrodotoxin by 50%, it will only disappear completely when boiling at 2,000C for 10 minutes. Therefore, we cannot detoxicate puffer fish by cooking and processing normally. |
Van Thanh
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