Loaches for Food

[Glostik]

I went to my local Korean market yesterday and low and behold they had a bucket of live dojo loaches for sale as food.

They were labeled as mud fish , but they were clearly dojos.

poor things

[tender]

Well, is that really a bad thing in itself? I`ll probably become unpopular now since this is a loach forum But, I mean, we humans have harvested from the sea,freshwater,forests etc for hundreds...thousands... of years. I guess since I come from a traditional fishing country (Norway) I`m just not automatically negative to fishing or hunting for food. Aren`t Clowns also caught as food in theyre natural habitat, or am I wrong? Nevertheless; what I do object strongly to is catching threatened species, ornamental hunting/breeding (fur,jewelry trade etc) and using fish as live foods for predators in confined tanks where the "victim" has no chance of escaping. This is disgusting in my opinion. But as long as we harvest sencibly and humanly I see no reason for not doing this. Even if it is a Loach Whether Dojo`s are good food or not, I have no idea (the species index says they are popular food), and principally I see nothing wrong with this. In fact I find it a bit more principally questionable with all the Loaches that are caught in the wild (solely for our pleasure)and often die because of long transport around the world, mishandling, or the mistreatment they often get by ignorant aquarists. (Not including the dedicated loach keepers on this great forum )

[Diana]

Ditto Tender.
I am vegetarian, myself, but have no problems with others eating what they want.
Dog is another food that is eaten in some areas, but not in others.
Ditto Cattle.
Ditto Pigs.
Ditto Horses.
...and so on. For any specific animal that some culture finds acceptable another will look down on.

I would prefer to hope that animals intended for slaughter are humanely treated and killed quickly, no matter what species.

[Bully]

Ditto Diana

[odyssey]

Dojo is being also eaten from ancient times in Japan like Korea. Before more than thousands of years.
I have eaten of course and also will eat in the future.

Since putting it in present Japan, a lot of Dojo is sold at an aqua shop, but that's as live bait for a large meat eating fish.
Several of Dojo which I am raising were sold as live bait.

Dojo has not been eaten any more so much in present Japan.
The freshwater fish by which it's for Dojo, crucian carp, carp, sweetfish, rockfish, landlocked salmon, goby and bullhead was an important source of protein of the people who live in an inland formerly.

Enormous numerical Dojo lived in former Japanese rice paddy. Rice, Dojo, locust and pond snail were a favor from a rice paddy.

There is famous YANAGAWA - NABE in Japan as a loach dish.
Since it'll be now, it's one of luxury dishes.
http://images.google.co.jp/images?q=%E6 ... =ja&tab=wi

There is a traditional dance which is the comical performing the state which scoops Dojo from a rice paddy in Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUALuGno6Go

[allialli]

That is sad and not right at all, why would you want to kill these interesting type of loaches. I wonder why they call them mud fish. I am never going to eat dojos.

[tender]

That is sad and not right at all

Why???

[mickthefish]

i have no problem with the people eating the fish, it's the diet they've grown up withg through the generations it's only like me eating pike and perch, i've even tried bream and carp and found them a nice change.

mick

[BotiaMaximus]

Local customs vary, and what some of us are comfortable with others won't be, and it isn't based on logic, just familiarity.

I have family in Norway and Norwegians eat whales, which as an American is unsettling to me, yet in America when we fish we use live bait which the Norwegians consider cruel (and illegal)- and it is cruel, but I never considered it because I grew up with it.

What some of us consider food and some consider pets is a difference we have to live with. Animal cruelty and taking species to the point of extinction hopefully we can all agree is wrong.

[tender]

As i said before; mankind has always harvested from the nature for food. (So do all other creatures on earth, including our fish). This is natural and how we survive and I see nothing wrong with it. It is mostly in recent decades with tv and other media availiable that we have started to get emotional about it. Think of the poor white seal with it`s cute eyes lying harpuned on the snow. Lot`s of blood around it and we all think "oh, poor thing". And suddenly it was illegal to catch seals. To me that`s completely irrational. And almost caused a major enviromental problem because the population got to big and a lot of fish species got threatned. Same with the whale. Don`t forget that there are hundreds of different whale species and the ones that get hunted down are not a threatend species. I understand that people might not like it, but this is not based on scientific reasons, but rather emotional ones. I think we would get into major problems if the laws were based on each individual persons feelings rather than scientific facts. Of course I must emphasize that I`m not in any way talking about any form of threatned species or hunting for pure pleasure.

[Slough Shark]

I agree with you tender. People need to get their emotions in check and deal with these matters rationally if they want to help anything. Just as you said, if we stop hunting a population (because we are predators in the food chain too, yes?) it can cause a lot of problems for the environment. There is a very large amount of deer where I am from because of the vast amount of food available for them, thanks to farms. If hunters did not kill them to control the population it would not be a good situation.

People can definitely take our position too far though (eg. bottom trawling, shooting from helicopters, etc.) these forms of "hunting" are completely unnatural and are disgusting.

Unless you are a complete vegetarian, you have no right to say anything negative about this loach-eating tradition.

[malfunkshun]

Well, if there were (more) natural predators in the wild that could control the population of deer for instance, that would be ideal.
But since man hunt even predators there will be a need for hunters to control the deer population.
Nature will find a balance on it's own, without our intervention.
So saying we having to control nature is just mankind being full of itself.

[tender]

Nature will find a balance on it's own, without our intervention.

No, it wont`t. Because humans are a part of nature, not an imposed addition or an intruder. We have developed like every other species on earth. For you`re theory to work we will have to eradicate modern sivilisation and go back to post ice-age. Not practical, and in my opinion not natural, because the development of our brains capacity to think, rather than act on instinct, is very much a course of nature. As long as we harvest sensibly, it is our duty and obligation to maintain an ecological balance as best we can. And this must be based on realistic and scientific grounds, not on emotional ones, just because an animal looks cute or not.

[Slough Shark]

Well, if there were (more) natural predators in the
So saying we having to control nature is just mankind being full of itself.

We do have to control nature (ourselves included) because we are the only animal, as far as we know, to have the ability to distinguish right from weak. You can't call anything that man does "unnatural" because we are nature. Anything we do on this earth, whether it is right or weak, is natural.

[malfunkshun]

Yes I agree with you on that. But it wasn't my intention to sound so extreme in the point I was trying to make.
Of course we are a part of nature and the environment we live in. But I think we have reached a point in our existence were it's not "natural" any more the way we manipulate our environment and surroundings.

I am not against eating meat animals since I grew up with hunting and fishing. But some things I just can't get behind.