ottawa foodies

I understand that lots of seafood (e.g., fishes, shrimps) nowadays are imported from Vietnam or China. Most of the fishes (e.g., filets) in the freezer shelves at Costco, Loblaws and T&T are from Vietnam, China, or India.

What do you think about this video?

vimeo.com/11817894

I wonder where I can buy the shrimps from South America (e.g., Venezuela, Chile, Argentina, Ecuador). 30 years ago, all the shrimps sold in the supermarkets in Chinatown were imported from Cuba and I do miss those good quality shrimps!

"I wonder where I can buy the shrimps from South America ... "?

I think Wellington Wholesale Seafood have them.

Guess what Canadian provincial capital city dumps ALL of their sewage untreated into the ocean? It is also a city with a high per capita of Hipsters!

I've bought south american shrimp from Wellington Wholesale Seafood too. I have been more concerned with finding shrimp that are frozen without phosphates and that is also a tough call, but I have found some at Costco recently.

As for frozen product of China ocean fish, a lot are actually wild-caught from Canadian waters and just processed in China, yes a crazy practice. Atlantic cod, haddock, turbot and halibut that say 'product of China' are from the North Atlantic and wild caught. They have been shipped to china and back for processing, but still Canadian fish.

Hey Krusty....
Hfx has done a huge amount of work cleaning that situation up. I would not swear there is no room for improvement but they are way ahead of Ottawa and our polluted shorelines here. They may however, have an over abundance of hipsters.....Just sayin...

I thought he was talking about Victoria, because they dump their raw sewage into the ocean too. I remember the local SCUBA divers referring to the outfall area (Clover Point) as the "land of the corn-eyed brown trout." :S

Anyway, off-topic!

Pollution aside, my biggest complaint with our affordable shrimp situation is that they replaced most of the Black Tiger shrimp with relatively tasteless Pacific White shrimp! Yes it's nice that shrimp is cheaper than steak, but it should have some flavour.

Read Bottomfeeder by Taras Grescoe. As far as shrimp (and many fish species) are concerned, it's a bleak picture. The Ocean Wise site is a good place to check for sustainable seafood options - their page on shrimp is at www.oceanwise.ca

You'll notice that all sources of shrimp from outside North America are on their Not Recommended list. Generally speaking, the shrimp from those sources are either farmed in cesspool-like conditions, or caught by bottom trawling that does a huge amount of damage from bycatch (unwanted species that are often killed) and destruction of marine habitat. Something to think about when you tuck into that next shrimp cocktail...