Prices for salmon are poised to continue their two-week slide, with exporters facing stockpiles of salmon from the double-whammy of large harvests and negative press from both China and Germany.And also June 19:
Average prices are rapidly moving toward the NOK 50 ($5.22/€4.66) per kilo mark, according to executives in the salmon farming sector.
"We're sitting on a lot of fish," one exporter said. "This is extremely serious for exporters, and overall a sad situation. We're losing millions."...MORE
Analysis: Searches for 'salmon and coronavirus' have exploded. But '三文鱼' is the one breaking the internet
Welcome to a historic week in seafood.
The media loves a good food scare and this week it was brought uncomfortably close to home for the seafood sector when farmed salmon became the target of Chinese media attention after its alleged link to a new outbreak of the coronavirus from a Beijing wet market.
Unfortunately for the global seafood sector, few countries react in quite the dramatic way China does when it comes to consumer-product related risks.
Think China doesn't care about food safety?
There is a common misconception that China is unconcerned with food safety. While images of wet markets -- often pinpointing the most rural examples, with cages of pangolins, cats and dogs -- have been prevalent in the press and give the impression of a lack of caution, the reality is far different.
Those images reinforce the offensive stereotype of Chinese consumers somehow being willing to eat anything, when the fact is, Chinese consumers are extremely focused on food safety. The country has a history of terrifying food-related crises, with unscrupulous manufacturers and foodservice operators taking advantage of a lack of enforced regulation. Just do a search for melamine-tainted milk, fake bottled water or sewer oil and you will get a taste of what it is like to live in the head of a Chinese consumer and why food scares leave a lasting bad taste in the mouth.
So when a chopping board in a Beijing wet market shows traces of a virus that has killed 450,000 people in the last six months and the product last on that board was a piece of salmon, it is no wonder that fear and a need to urgently remove any possible risk is the first reaction.
After all, there is enough past evidence of far worse breaches of food safety to want to avoid any kind of risk, proven or otherwise.........MUCH MORE
June 18
Chinese authorities to carry out inspections at three Norwegian salmon processing plants
