The sashimi business is dead

Sakuraya on a Saturday evening is usually more than well patronized. I was curious how they were doing since we had the raw freshwater fish bacteria (GBS) will eat you from inside scare.

The impact on the business is nothing short of devastating. Only two tables were occupied his evening.

Yep, I became curious after I was aghast with Cold Storage replacing raw salmon with smoked salmon in their maki.

Looks like consumers are not getting enough security from AVA and NEA to continue eating sashimi. It has been three weeks since the ST published that. I wonder how long people will need to wait before they can expunge their irrational fear. I imagine those Norwegian salmon go to many countries and only Singapore is afraid to consume them. The other importers are happily eating.

Sashimi sellers must be pretty upset with the regulators over this issue. To me AVA lack the deeper technical capabilities to test and be surer. The Black Swan tragedy from freshwater GBS had cost them their self confidence. When you hedge so much, you might as well tell consumers all raw fishes regardless if they are freshwater or seawater are risky. Then you go and do the necessary hard work to make sure they are OK. Alas these civil servants are out of depth for this latest challenge.

Everyone here looks to the government for guidance. Nobody knows how to organize and lead an effort to get to the bottom of this eh?

I wonder if our AVA capable of catching future fake foods from China. Perhaps we have just been lucky. Chinese consumers get hurt and was reported before such foods get imported here. I think our reputation has become much larger than our capabilities. Such gaps always narrow, it is on a question of narrowing up or down.