Date: February 11, 2010
To: letters@globeandmail.ca
Subject: Swimming with the fishes
Your article about the latest trend in dining – eating flesh from a still-dying fish (The Freshest Fish From The Far East – Life, Feb. 10) left me salivating for more. The descriptions of how needles are placed in the brain to keep fish alive but brain-dead for extended periods, of how “the fish’s still-beating heart pumps blood out of its body” while dying, how “they don’t even realize they are dying” while tender slivers are carved off for the discriminating diner, are positively mouth-watering.
Can we now expect other enterprising chefs to take the kaimin katsugyo technique (placing needles in the brain to induce “a sort of coma”) one step further? Wouldn’t it be a delight to be able to go back into the kitchen and ask the chef to carve out a nice steak from a carefully selected steer that is in a “twilight state between life and death”? It could be served with some freshly baked blood sausage or chopped liver from the same steer. “The sweetness of it starts at the tongue and seems to fill the mouth ...”
The thought of the possibilities is almost enough to persuade me to give up my vegetarian diet. Almost, but not quite.
Ben Rathbone
Kamloops, BC
Date: February 11, 2010
To: letters@globeandmail.ca
Subject: Swimming with the fishes
Anyone who’s experienced a state of complete paralysis with semi-consciousness, as I have, will know this is a horrible experience, even if it lasts for only a few seconds. Can one be sure that fish kept alive and paralyzed using kaimin katsugyo is not experiencing this state when it’s transported for hours? If one wants to eat fresh fish, go and live by a river, lake or the sea. Catch it yourself and kill it quickly. If you can’t do that, what’s wrong with frozen fish?
Hans van Netten
Victoria, BC
Date: February 11, 2010
To: letters@globeandmail.ca
Subject: Swimming with the fishes
Would this kaimin katsugyo process be possible for us humans when we travel by air? Paralysis would surely help ameliorate the pain of flying the friendly skies in these unfriendly times.
Geoff Smith
Kingston, ON
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