Tag Archives: tuna

Business/Economics, U.S.

Food Crisis 29 April 2015: There’s human in that can of tuna? “I think our lives are in the hands of the Lord of Death.”

“When that door was shut, and he saw that, what was all the thoughts that went trough his mind?  It’s just devastating.”-Sarah Melena, daughter of man cooked alive, KCAL/KCBS interview

Two managers of Bumble Bee Tuna have been criminally charged with killing a man inside a tuna cooker, cooking him alive with 12-hundred pounds of fish!

It happened in Santa Fe Springs, California, in 2012.   The victim was inside a giant tuna oven cleaning it when it was loaded with fish and turned on.  The victim was cooked slowly to death over a two hours period!  The charges come after a two and half years investigation by the Los Angeles County district attorney and the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health.

This is not the first time Bumble Bee tuna has gotten in trouble, their San Diego operations were charged with violating state safety laws because, apparently, employees there were almost cooked in the tuna ovens as well!

The Santa Fe Springs managers could get three years in prison and pay up to $250-thousand USD in fines, if convicted. Bumble Bee Tuna could be fined up to $1.5-million.

Just last month The Associated Press published the results of their undercover investigation into old-school slavery in the fishing industry, and made a connection to Bumble Bee Tuna: “Tainted fish can wind up in the supply chains of some of America’s major grocery stores, such as Kroger, Albertsons and Safeway; the nation’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart; and the biggest food distributor, Sysco…..

…. his parent company, known simply as Thai Union, owns Chicken of the Sea and is buying Bumble Bee…..In September, it became the country’s first business to be certified by Dow Jones for sustainable practices, after meeting environmental and social reviews.”-Are Slaves Catching the Fish You Buy?

“It’s torture. When we get beaten, we can’t do anything back. I think our lives are in the hands of the Lord of Death.”-slave on southeast Asian fishing boat

“If Americans and Europeans are eating this fish, they should remember us. There must be a mountain of bones under the sea.  The bones of the people could be an island, it’s that many.”– Hlaing Min, escaped southeast Asian slavery

U.S. Food Crisis, April 2015:  Ice cream can kill you! 

Fukushima, International

More Fukushima Fallout: Companies who built Fukushima Daiichi will build new nuke plants for Bilderberger Britain! 1600 people die because of the melt downs! More mystery strontium leaks!

24 December 2013 (12:11 UTC-07 Tango)/20 Safar 1435/03 Dey 1392/22 Jia-Zi (11th month) 4711

A study reported to the October 2013 PICES meeting in British Columbia, Canada, says by 2016 all of Fukushima Daiichi’s cesium 137 will arrive in the United States and Canada!  The Arctic Ocean will also be contaminated.

What about the other isotopes?  The presentation to PICES concluded that “The inventory of Fukushima radioactivity will almost entirely shift….to the eastern North Pacific over the next 5 years.”   The presentation is available in PDF, it’s titled Radionuclide Transport from Fukushima to Eastern North Pacific

Tokyo Electric Power Company reporting that at least two nuclear waste water storage tank farm liners/barriers have mysteriously lost most of their contained contaminated rain water.  TEPCo is calling it a “phenomenon”.

The liners/barriers, which are near the reactor Unit 4, are showing no visible signs of leaks.  One of the liners/barriers saw a water level drop of 11 centimeters (4 inches) since last Friday.  TECPo says the water in the tank farm liners/barriers contains 440 becquerels per liter of radioactive strontium!  They suspect the water is seeping into the ground through cracks they can not see.

Since last week contaminated water leaks in four tank farm liners/barriers were discovered (or at least reported).

Days ago the Japanese Mainichi newspaper reported that at least 16-hundred people have died as direct and indirect result of the ongoing Fukushima Daiichi nuke disaster.

This includes deaths from radiation contamination and psychological stress due to becoming refugees within their own country, with no employment or permanent place to live.  Add to that the fact that the neo-imperialist government of Japan keeps changing the rules of how radiation refugees will be compensated.

A contractor who built the GE designed disaster reactors (units 3 and 5) of Fukushima Daiichi is now majority owner of a failing nuclear power company in United Kingdom.  Toshiba now owns 50% of NuGeneration.

According to press releases, Toshiba’s majority stake in NuGeneration will allow the construction of a new 3.6 gigawatt nuclear power generator in Sellafield, England, on the coast of the Irish Sea.

Hitachi built the GE designed Fukushima Daiichi reactor Unit 4 (which has proven to be causing the most trouble), and has also taken over a troubled British nuke power company.  In November 2012, Hitachi became sole owner of Horizon Nuclear Power in England.   According to the latest Japanese news reports, Hitachi-Horizon plans on building six new nuclear power generators in the United Kingdom.

GE built Fukushima Daiichi’s units 1, 2 and 6.  GE designed all the reactors units including the ones built by Hitachi and Toshiba.  Construction of the reactor unit buildings was done by Kajima.

According to The Japan Times, the exodus from Fukushima Prefecture continues.  Already grade schools have had to shut down due to lack of students, now local privately funded universities are reporting 18.7% fewer students.  Tax funded universities are not reporting declining enrollments, but that might be due to declining tuition and fees.  However, the Fukushima tax funded universities also say they have not seen an increase in enrollment, either.  This means that overall, college aged students are leaving the area.

The government of Fukushima Prefecture will allow experimental rice growing in radiation evac zones.  The rice will be tested for radiation contamination.

At the beginning of 2012, researchers from California and New York proved that tuna fish are contaminated: “We report unequivocal evidence that Pacific bluefin tuna, Thunnus orientalis, transported Fukushima-derived radionuclides across the entire North Pacific Ocean. We measured γ-emitting radionuclides in California-caught tunas and found 134Cs (4.0 ± 1.4 Bq kg−1) and elevated 137Cs (6.3 ± 1.5 Bq kg−1) in 15 Pacific bluefin tuna sampled in August 2011.”–Pacific bluefin tuna transport Fukushima-derived radionuclides from Japan to California

Fukushima

Food Crisis: Think Tuna prices are high now? Red Sea Tuna now extinct!

23 August 2013 (00:07 UTC-07 Tango)/16 Shawwal 1434/01  Shahrivar 1392/17 Geng-Shen (7th month) 4711

“We are currently experiencing some of the most severe supply shortages that the tuna industry has ever faced.”-Unnamed fish supplier in a memo to a Rhode Island restaurant in 2012, trying to explain why prices are going up

On 22 August 2013, Japan’s Fisheries Agency warned they will order a reduction in allowed bluefin tuna catches by their fishing industry.  In March 2013, there were reports that the Japanese news media almost ignored a study by the International Scientific Committee for Tuna and Tuna-like Species in the Northern Pacific that said not only have tuna populations been falling for decades, the population decline has snowballed towards extinction!

The latest survey estimates that today’s Pacific bluefin tuna population has crashed by 96.4% over the past few decades, and current catches could guarantee extinction: “Over 90% of the catch is juveniles, caught in nursery and spawning areas. Literally, the zero to three year age class, so they’re being caught on their spawning grounds before they can reproduce, with no catch limit, and gee whiz, we’re at 3.6% of the original population. I wonder why?”-Amanda Nickson, Pew Environment Group

In fact, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Ministry of Fisheries Affairs has reported a loss of 70% in its Red Sea fishing industry. Fishermen say it’s partly due to the extinction of Red Sea tuna caused by pollution: “The entire expanse of sea lying between Jeddah and Qunfuda is polluted and has resulted in the depletion of the fish resources and the total disappearance of tuna.”-Abdullah Al-Sayed, a fisherman in Jeddah.

Even the cheap generic brand of canned tuna could become unaffordable. Tuna packed in veggie oil has already gone way up because veggie oil prices have skyrocketed!

Even the cheap generic brand of canned tuna could become unaffordable. Tuna packed in veggie oil has already gone way up because veggie oil prices have skyrocketed!

It should matter to Japanese because tuna is king of sushi.  It’s estimated that the Japanese eat 80% of the tuna caught around the World!  Japanese have been hearing about this for awhile, but maybe they haven’t noticed that since 2007 some tuna sushi has been replaced with different fish (some reports mentioned deer meat).

But Japanese fish mongers have seen for years a decline in available tuna in the fish markets, resulting in higher prices every year.  In January 2013, a 489 pounds bluefin tuna sold for a record $1.76 million USD in Japan!

(don’t forget to add the incredible amount of deadly radiation that’s been pouring into the northern Pacific from Fukushima Daiichi, since 2011:  Pacific bluefin tuna transport Fukushima-derived radionuclides from Japan to California)

It’s not just bluefin that’s disappearing, it’s other tuna as well.  Today, the latest global tuna catch records show that only 18-thousands metric tons of tuna were caught last year, it hasn’t been that low since the 1980s.

Vietnam just reported that its fishing industry is having a hard time catching tuna, their exports are down as result.

An official with New Zealand’s Secretariat of the Pacific Community recently blamed lack of government management and monitoring of fishing industries: “…this is done country by country, different countries are doing different things and taking different approaches to their management and data collection. Some are focusing more on the tuna fishery….that’s being lost to the countries because the fishery wasn’t managed sustainably. We know that many of the main centers around the Pacific, the main urban centers, there is a shortage of fish and people are needing to go further to catch fish, or in some countries they are trying to bring in fish from other locations in the country, so we know there is over fishing occurring…..management is to include the monitoring so that you actually have an idea of what’s happening in the fishery…”-Lindsay Chapman

India has just lifted its trawling fishing ban, many people in India hope it will bring fish prices down, because the industrial fish farms just could not produce enough fish to offset the lack of wild caught fish due to the trawling fishing ban.  Not only are tuna prices way up in India, so are sardine prices.

What was that about “teach a man to fish”?