The norwegian salmon farming indsutry is endelssy facinating. Such a young industry has grown from the invention of floating open net pen cages in western norway in the 50s to a 1,4 million tonne export in 2020 worth approximately 7 billion dollars.<p>Due to the technical and biological challenges of food production in the sea as well as the environmental and social pressures to transform the industry, it is now one of the most innovative food production sectors in the world.<p>Digitalization and AI counting of parasites [0], lasers to remove lice [1] and huge offshore installations to minimize coastal impact [2] and crispr sterilized fish [3] are some examples of innovation happening right now in the sector.<p>[0]: <a href="https://aquabyte.ai/" rel="nofollow">https://aquabyte.ai/</a>
[1]: <a href="https://www.stingray.no/delousing-with-laser/?lang=en" rel="nofollow">https://www.stingray.no/delousing-with-laser/?lang=en</a>
[2]: <a href="https://www.salmar.no/havbasert-fiskeoppdrett-en-ny-aera/" rel="nofollow">https://www.salmar.no/havbasert-fiskeoppdrett-en-ny-aera/</a>
[3]: <a href="https://www.hi.no/en/hi/temasider/aquaculture/editing-the-genes-of-farmed-salmon" rel="nofollow">https://www.hi.no/en/hi/temasider/aquaculture/editing-the-ge...</a>
This Twitter thread is mostly a summary of this article, which provides more detail, albeit maybe in a less easily digestible (ha!) form:<p><a href="https://medium.com/torodex/salmon-sushi-is-not-a-japanese-invention-9189d9cd78b7" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/torodex/salmon-sushi-is-not-a-japanese-in...</a><p>The thread is actually wrong on the campaign cost, which might be attributable to the AI-powered summarisation the tweet author boasts about. Norway spent 30m <i>kroner</i> (NOK) on the campaign, which is about $3.75 million instead of the $30m the tweet claims. And the thread misses out the potential return on investment: Norwegian salmon imports to Japan went from 400 million NOK before the campaign, to 1.8 billion NOK in the second half of the 80's.
IMO it isn't much about parasites, it is more a B2B sales tactics turned B2C, and turns out general public likes it. The Project Japan pitch in 1985 was targeting a group of japanese industry experts. It is this group of expert that says the salmon contains parasites hence the customer won't eat it. But in the 90s, after the striking the deal with Nichirei, they find that customer actually like the fatty taste of salmon, parasites wasn't a concern to most.<p>It's like facebook/tiktok pitching their platform to an HN crowd and we obsess over security, privacy, social bubble, vision and stuff, turns out no one give a damn. People like scrolling on the phone aimlessly. That's the fatty salmon
Previous discussion of NPR article covering the 1980s push by Norway to get Japanese people to accept salmon: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10243823" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10243823</a>
I've always wondered about the history of eating raw meat. My family personally doesn't eat anything raw because of the news reports we've read of people getting sick (or worse) after consuming raw meat, and we make sure to only eat fully cooked meat.<p>My grandparents' generation also seem more familiar with fully cooked meat, I'm wondering whether raw meat came along more recently and where it originated from. At least in the West.
My favorite salmon fact is that salmon was really common in the West European rivers. They aren't there anymore due to damming, watermills and other industrialization slowing down the rivers causing them to contain more mud and sand rather than rocks.<p><a href="https://historiek.net/komt-watermolen-deed-nederlandse-zalm-de-das-om/60756/" rel="nofollow">https://historiek.net/komt-watermolen-deed-nederlandse-zalm-...</a><p>I've heard from multiple sources that even some old professions had rules about how often they can be force to eat salmon. For example this source talks about how messengers are protected and are only allowed to eat salmon 2-3 times a week. I've seen similar rules in an old dutch servants cook book.<p><a href="http://www.gestolengrootmoeder.nl/wordpress/dienstboden-wilden-niet-meer-dan-drie-keer-per-week-zalm-eten-echt/" rel="nofollow">http://www.gestolengrootmoeder.nl/wordpress/dienstboden-wild...</a>
As someone who used to live in Japan I can say that Chilean salmon is much more common than Norwegian while it is also cheaper. The higher price of the Norwegian salmon and its packaging which has the character for fresh used before it ( 生 - as opposed to cured with salt) is made to give the impression that it is superior. I don't have the data for this but I think Sushi sold in stores is mostly Chilean too, unless being explicitly tagged as Atlantic in which case again it would be more expensive.
Seems like salmon sushi didn't start at all with Norway:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k4x9FrD5k4">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k4x9FrD5k4</a>
This myth was disproven by Andong on YouTube. He found a NYTimes article from 1975 about sushi in Japan that included salmon.<p>Watch here: <a href="https://youtu.be/1k4x9FrD5k4?t=668" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/1k4x9FrD5k4?t=668</a><p>Edit: Andong also <i>specifically</i> talks about the Nichirei deal.
I'd be curious to see a data viz of map with a time slider at the bottom, and a food item selecter on the left. For a particular food item, you could see how it spread from it's origin to the cuisines of various regions around the world over time.<p>For instance, noodles from China, or chilis from the Americas.
I am pretty sure Project Japan has very little to do with it. Ultimately Salmon Sashimi took off in the East Asia region as well as the Sushi world outside of Japan. And Japan being Japan, took their time to evaluate it due to culture issues.
Here's a YT video from a few months ago that has some additional information:<p><a href="https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1k4x9FrD5k4">https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1k4x9FrD5k4</a>
Related:<p><i>Norway convinced Japan to love salmon sushi (2015)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31148527" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31148527</a> - April 2022 (112 comments)<p><i>How Norway Created Salmon Sushi</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10243823" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10243823</a> - Sept 2015 (88 comments)<p>(I thought there had been more of these but couldn't find more)
From the tweets:<p>> <i>Japan was a natural market for raw fish but Norway had to overcome a few obstacles:</i><p>So I interpret that as, eating raw fish in general - the main thing about sushi that takes getting used to for westerners - was common in Japan before and was not introduced by the marketing campaign.<p>The campaign was specifically about the stigma around raw <i>salmon</i>, not raw fish in general.
And yet you should avoid farmed salmon[0].<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaculture_of_salmonids#Issues" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaculture_of_salmonids#Issue...</a>
I don't get the appeal or raw protein. I tasted it all, raw eggs, raw fish, raw beef and it all just does not taste very good, not as good as the cooked variant.
I call bullshit. Raw Atlantic Salmon Sushi was a "thing" in the US since 1975.<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1975/04/06/archives/food-natural-wonder-natural-wondercont-from-page-82.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/1975/04/06/archives/food-natural-won...</a><p>image in the bottom left is "salmon sashimi"<p>here's an image of Michael J Fox eating a piece of salmon sushi on the cover of esquire magazine, circa 1988<p><a href="https://twitter.com/scbaird/status/1294804653755052032" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/scbaird/status/1294804653755052032</a>