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Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

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Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#131

Post by plastic-enjoyer »

rob74 wrote: post #16
comrade1234 wrote: post #6

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…

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).

> I mean, instead of investing so much effort to get glutamate into your food, why not use MSG directly?

HN never disappoints when it comes to bizarre takes.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#132

Post by bsimpson »

colechristensen wrote: post #129
bsimpson wrote: post #125

The talk of glutamic acid made me wonder if fish sauce is related to MSG. Gemini confirms MSG is just salt and glutamic acid, which is to say fish sauce is naturally derived MSG. Fun story: I was riding a motorcycle across Vietnam a few years ago. Made some friends on an excursion, and we all went to dinner together. The restaurant was a little outdoor kitchen and some picnic benches in front of an apartment building…

You can find msg in your local grocery store, usually under the Accent brand. I've seen two pound jars of it in Costco.

I know that now, but I'd only heard the hysteria around it as a kid.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#133

Post by fooster »

Reason077 wrote: post #66
wang_li wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This stuff is barely pollution. Everything there is a natural part of the environment and biological processes. Literally the only issue here is the concentration of it. Dumping it in the ocean is an ideal course of action. Failing that it should be dumped out in the wilderness, not in bags, but just on the ground. It may have a short-term change in the local environment, but long term it's fertilizer. The risk of du…

> ”It may have a short-term change in the local environment, but long term it's fertilizer.” The fish would make for great fertilizer, but the salt would not. High salt concentrations will kill many plants and probably would stick around in the soil for a long time.

The ocean seems to contain a great deal of salt though.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#134

Post by fooster »

falsemyrmidon wrote: post #67
buellerbueller wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is fish sauce a toxin?

It's the dosage that makes the poison. If you dumped it all in the ocean in a single spot then yes, it would probably kill the local ecosystem.

Yeah sure I’m deep ocean it would kills the local ecosystem

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#135

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

peri-cl wrote: post #65

I recall reading there were zoning laws in the classical era about where you could manufacture garum (the Roman fermented fish condiment). Here's one attributable example I could find, from the tail end of the Eastern empire. This is 2.4.22 in the Hexabiblos (1344–1345) ["–" sic ] of the Byzantine jurist, Constantine Harmenopoulos of Thessalonica; it legislates a ~450–600-meter exclusion zone (three stadia ). The arc…

Why would cheesemakers be smelly?

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#136

Post by fooster »

hluska wrote: post #77
Maxion wrote: post #51

Why on earth are they not composting it, but instead putting in a landfill and locking it up? What a dumb idea.

Environment Canada’s testing found it ‘acutely lethal’. I’d consider composting an acutely lethal substance that is extremely high in salt to be the dumb idea. Canada actually has scientists. From reading through these comments, I know that’s a shock but we do, they test things and they follow the evidence before making recommendations. In fact, those test results from back in 2016 are even public. Just because this…

They’re going zip it up, as if that won’t break eventually and then leak into the environment. I don’t need to be an environmental scientist to know that is a monumentally stupid solution.

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#137

Post by roncesvalles »

dataflow wrote: post #97
jjmarr wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having grown up in Toronto, unqualified "beef patty" means the Jamaican snack. It is extremely common junk food I would buy at a convenience store on my way home from school.

Not being from Toronto, never in a million years would I even think of that as a visitor.

Sorry, but you're just uncultured if you don't know what Jamaican patties are.

This is like saying "never in a million years would I think 'butter chicken' is a red, spicy Indian curry instead of chicken roasted in butter".

Re: Decades-old fish sauce at abandoned factory in Canada finally being removed

#139

Post by dhosek »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #135
peri-cl wrote: post #65

I recall reading there were zoning laws in the classical era about where you could manufacture garum (the Roman fermented fish condiment). Here's one attributable example I could find, from the tail end of the Eastern empire. This is 2.4.22 in the Hexabiblos (1344–1345) ["–" sic ] of the Byzantine jurist, Constantine Harmenopoulos of Thessalonica; it legislates a ~450–600-meter exclusion zone (three stadia ). The arc…

Why would cheesemakers be smelly?

Stinky cheeses have largely disappeared from the zeitgeist, but were used to be much more common (see, for example, the Pepe Le Pew cartoon from the 40s where his would-be paramour locks herself in a Limburger cheese factory gaining a stench that puts the amorous skunk in flight).
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