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

defector.com

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

#181

Post by Reason077 »

fooster wrote: post #133
Reason077 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ”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.

Absolutely. So the ideal solution would be to return it to whence it came, but presumably that’s easier said than done if they’re going to all this trouble to bury it in a plastic sarcophagus instead.

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

#182

Post by Reason077 »

wang_li wrote: post #83
Reason077 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ”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.

There's not enough salt to sterilize the land where dumped. The salt in fish sauce preparation may be as high as 20% initially but by the time it's done, after having been drained and refilled multiple times, it's 2-4%. To sterilize land requires 5-10kg/m^2 of salt applied repeatedly.

I’m not talking about sterilizing land. Just that salt is not a desirable ingredient in fertilizer. Most plants will not thrive in salty soil, even if it doesn’t kill them.

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

#183

Post by inigyou »

tantalor wrote: post #143
Waterluvian wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "environment" can handle basically anything given the right conditions and timescale. It's very much 'the dose makes the poison' here, too (eg. how stormwater ponds help protect watersheds from road salt runoff, but often themselves become far too saline to sustain the same ecosystem as the watershed). So while you're not wrong, none of what you commented really means anything. It's a broad assertion without any…

The solution to pollution is dilution.

Certain types of pollution. If it biodegrades and less than a million tonnes are being dumped in total, dilution probably works. This is the case here. However you still don't want it anywhere near human settlements because it stinks

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

#184

Post by inigyou »

snapplebobapple wrote: post #172
rawgabbit wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Choose one of the bureaucracies and shut it down. It doesnt even matter which one you choose, it will be a better outcome

I choose the EPA.

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

#185

Post by inigyou »

gruez wrote: post #62
busterarm wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canadian bureaucracy around food is at times insane (and vaguely racist). Just look up '1985 Jamaican patty wars'.

From cbc: >In 1985, the Canadian government tried to stop Jamaican bakeries and restaurants from using the term "beef patty." >At the time, Canada's Meat Inspection Act classified a beef patty as what goes in a hamburger. It could contain only meat and seasoning and it couldn't be encased in dough or a crust. Therefore, a Jamaican patty — widely known as a flaky pastry with a spiced beef filling — didn't meet the cri…

Did you know in Germany it's illegal to call a product "soy yoghurt" because yoghurt is a dairy product?

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

#186

Post by inigyou »

stickfigure wrote: post #146
anigbrowl wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any confusion can easily be resolved by asking the person offering to sell you one what it is. I do not need terminological rules between me and fast food vendors; if I buy a 'muffin hot dog parfait' and it turns out not to be the tasty dish I was expecting, I may complain about it but I have the choice to just not go there again. I support the idea of truth in advertising laws but I think they should be limited to f…

I am shocked to learn there is no dog in a hot dog. Calling my lawyer...

In Germany if they applied the laws consistently it would actually be illegal to call it a hot dog if it wasn't dog. Supermarket had to rename "chilli beans" to "kidney beans in chilli sauce" because there's no bean species called a chilli bean

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

#187

Post by inigyou »

kridsdale1 wrote: post #107
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…

Petition to restore “aforestated” to common parlance.

a forest ate Ted

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

#188

Post by inigyou »

hluska wrote: post #72
gruez wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just sounds like it's a knee jerk reaction from regulators. For decades their reaction to pollution was "yeah just dump it in the ocean", then we figured out it was bad. So now the pendulum swung the other way where we can't dump anything in the ocean, even if it's probably benign, because if it turns out to be not benign, it'll super bad on you. "You did what? Approved dumping pollutants in the ocean? Haven't y…

This sludge was actually tested and analyzed- it’s not compatible with marine life and would in fact cause an ecological disaster. It’s why they’re mixing it with peat moss and also why they’re doing the work now - the factory itself has been battered by waves and the vats are in danger of being washed into the sea.

It's not like we humans have any aversion to killing individual wildlife, as long as the ecosystem is okay.

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

#189

Post by inigyou »

fooster wrote: post #134
falsemyrmidon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Which is something humans do regularly e.g. every time a house is built

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

#190

Post by inigyou »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #177
mlmonkey wrote: post #138

Can they not use some microbes to digest the sauce and reduce it to inert things like water and salt? I'm not a biologist, so pardon this naive take.

The salt is to ensure most microbes won’t survive, hence keeping it safe to eat.

So the solution to pollution is dilution - in the opposite way. Add water to a batch of it until the salt concentration is low enough for decomposition?

Problem: it'll smell much worse while it decomposes. That's surely why they don't.

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