Sushi, Tuna, and the Global Supply Chain

I Love Sushi! Sushi is a product from ancient Japanese culture right? If you’d asked me just a few weeks ago, I’d probably have thought so. But in reality hand-pressed sushi that we love to eat today (or, more specifically, that I love to eat, sometimes a couple times a week) began as a snack sold by street vendors in 19th century Tokyo.

The typical Japanese diet didn’t consist of fatty tuna, and certainly there was little (if any) red meat on their dinner plates.

All that changed when the Americans occupied Japan after World War II, bringing along with them the dietary penchant for meat. Greasy, red meat.

Now, as sushi-lovers the world over know, the sushi market revolves around fatty tuna.

A recent book by Sasha Issenberg, The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy, shows how sushi is a model of how the modern flow of money, goods, and services in a globalized economy has made the sushi bar down the street (and the one on the corner, and the other one a few block up) possible.

Issenberg traces the modern sushi industry to the summer of 1972 when Japan Airlines delivered four Canadian Bluefin Tuna to the Tsukiji market in Tokyo, the first time Atlantic fish has been transported to Japan by air carrier. Says Issenberg: “In a sense, contemporary sushi culture was born as much on the shores of Prince Edward Island as in any Japanese restaurant.”

What is good for sushi-lovers may not be so good for the fish. As popularity and demand rise, the strains on wild fish stocks and the danger of fishery collapse grow.

When asked if it is possible to eat fish “ethically”, Issenberg says, essentially, that some fish consumption is more ethical (or perhaps “sustainable” is a better word) than others. “Fish do not travel with any documents about their provenance, and even many attentive, well-meaning chefs don't know which ocean the seafood they serve came from. That makes it difficult for the diner to enforce his ethics piece by piece at the sushi bar.” His idea of the true power of the individual is as a citizen instead of a consumer: pressuring government and industry to adopt, adhere to, and enforce sustainable global fishing practices.

But, as with so much else in our modern consumer society, “all eyes are on China”. As the appetite for luxury items grows (I don’t usually think of sushi as a luxury item – until I get the bill), supply, prices, and pressure on wild fish stocks may largely be determined by how much the Chinese take to foods like sushi.

But, as Issenbert suggests, we all need to be good global citizens and do what we can to steer, cajole, pressure, and if need be, boycott government and industry into following a path of sustainability.

As goes the Bluefin Tuna, so goes the sushi bar.

Sources and Further Reading
Environmental News Network
ScientificAmerican.com

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Sushi, Tuna, and the Global Supply Chain

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