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Caviar Eggs 3 Letters

Caviar is one of the most valuable foods in the world, but it is far from sustainable. German marine biologist Angela Kohler plans to change that with a new form of sustainable caviar.

Caviar Eggs 3 Letters

Kohler has developed a way to extract caviar from unkilled fish. Most caviar comes from sturgeon, a fish that is usually reared for 10 years or more before it is killed for its roe. Sturgeon happen to be listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s red list of threatened species as the most threatened group of animals.

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Kohler has patented a way to knead the eggs out of the sturgeon. First, an ultrasound is used to see the eggs. The fish are then given a signaling protein days before the eggs are ready to be harvested to induce labour.

The eggs are then massaged out of the belly. This enables sturgeon farmers to reuse the same fish to harvest roe several times during their expected lifespan of 60 to 120 years. The removed eggs are then put through a calcium water solution to prepare them for curing and packing for consumption.

Kohler used the technique in a contained sturgeon farm in Germany to produce cruelty-free caviar, also known as “no-kill” and “correct” caviar. They produced 1,100 pounds in 2013.

The sustainable caviar is marketed under the Vivace name for $125 per ounce. It’s on the menu at California Caviar Co.’s retail and tasting facility. in Sausalito which recently opened.

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“It was gross,” Geno Evans, owner of Anastasia Gold Caviar in Florida told NPR. Evans tried to extract caviar without killing the fish, but found it too soft. “It wasn’t caviar,” he said.

[This post has been updated May 12, 1:29 p.m.: A previous version of this post stated that there are three types of Vivace available. There is only one, with the possibility of more in the future. Also Geno Evans was commenting on the technique, not the taste of the caviar.]

Jenn Harris is a columnist for the Food section and host of fried chicken show “The Bucket List”. She has a BA in literary journalism from UC Irvine and an MA in journalism from USC. Follow her @Jenn_Harris_.The demand for its eggs almost made the beluga sturgeon disappear. Even now, when most caviar comes from farms, eating it is controversial. So why do so many restaurants refuse to give up?

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Yet there is no denying that caviar has an image problem. Until a few decades ago, fishermen would take beluga sturgeon out of the Caspian and Black Seas, cut out the “roe sacks” that held their eggs, and throw the fish back in to die. As a result, sturgeon became seriously endangered. The international trade in wild sturgeon from the region has been banned since 2006, and although there is an increasing number of sturgeon farms around the world that are trying to make the process more sustainable, the methods used to extract the eggs , and the morality of dedicating valuable resources towards the production of this symbol of luxury, means that the ethics of caviar remain ambiguous.

“It’s not like shark fin soup, where you have desperate fishermen catching sharks, cutting off their fins and throwing them back,” says Chris King, executive chef of the Langham hotel in London. “There is a moral question for caviar, of course, but it is possible to farm sturgeon. It is

Farming.” Serving the caviar he sources for the Langham, he says, is no more or less ethically troublesome than serving quality beef or farmed Scottish salmon. What is important to King is that he buys the best and serves it in such a way that his diners “understand what the fuss is about. Most people don’t get it often. It’s important that they get a good chunk, and it’s served in an elegant way.”

But attitudes towards sourcing and serving caviar are changing. Although the Langham still offers it in the friendly round tins, to be eaten by the spoonful, it is rarely called for these days; gone, too, is the demand for blinis with a dollop of creme fraiche. “These days, I sell caviar a lot more in dishes where it’s an element, like our roasted scallops with caviar,” says King. “Tastes are changing, and people are asking if tins and blinis are really the way to appreciate caviar, with all its nuances of texture and taste.”

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Charles Smith, head chef at the Lords of the Manor hotel in Gloucestershire, says he values caviar “more for the flavor profile than the prestige around it”. He likes to put it on a dish alongside native lobster, whose sweet meat pairs perfectly with the saltiness of the eggs. “Those people will always come into the hotel and want a tin of caviar for its aesthetics, but for me it’s an ingredient,” he said. Gary Robinson, executive chef at the Balmoral hotel in Edinburgh, takes a similar view: “We would only use caviar when a dish is enhanced by its taste and texture – never for glamor or show.”

In the past, Smith has traded directly with a small producer in Germany: “I know these guys; they look after their fish every hour of the day, provide the right nutrition, environment and so on. I feel comfortable serving this caviar, where we might not with a mainstream supplier.”

So far, so above board. But even sustainable caviar can slip into murky waters. While some water farms harvest the roe alongside the meat at the end of the sturgeon’s life, others extract the eggs while the fish are still alive, every two years. This would be fine if sturgeon were like salmon, trout or other fish that can be “milked” without too much trouble – but they aren’t. “They are prehistoric fish, dating back 250m years, and they haven’t changed much,” said Harry Ferguson, director of operations at Exmoor Caviar farm in Devon. “Their roe sack is not like a bag from which the eggs pour. You have to make at least a two-inch cut and massage the roe out.” In its favour, this is better than killing wild sturgeon – and those farms that produce caviar this way claim it is as painless as possible.

As well as the ethical questions about egg extraction, there is also the issue of “fish laundering”, as Dr Krzysztof Wojtas at Compassion in Wild Farming (CIWF) points out. “Mackerel, sardines and other foraging fish are landed in Africa or South Asia, and processed for carnivorous fish food. By farming for caviar, you are using food that could feed the many to make a high value product for the few,” he said. The same could be said for salmon, another carnivorous fish that is farmed – but that is hardly an endorsement when you consider how negatively salmon farming affects the environment.

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“People buy themselves nice shoes, faces, jewelry every day – of course they should also buy caviar regularly,” said Mark Zaslavsky, US CEO of Marky’s Caviar, whose restaurant is in York Newly lists BEC, or “beluga bacon, egg and caviar sandwich” among its brunch options. Yet, just as farming has reduced salmon from a delicacy to a common sandwich filling, with the consequences of overstocking ranging from infestations of fish lice to polluting the surrounding waters with faeces and chemicals, so CIWF fears the the same could happen with sturgeon.

But that is impossible, says Ferguson, who says that sturgeon farming is not like salmon farming. “There is nothing we can do to cheat the system. There is no advantage to high stocking density, as it will adversely affect the flavour.” Ditto poor standards of nutrition or welfare. No one is looking for budget caviar, he said. “There’s no point in us producing anything less than the best.”

Like Marky’s farm, Caviar Exmoor’s approach to producing sustainable and ethical caviar is to raise the fish to maturity, then use it all: roe, meat and organs. For King and Smith, the best way to respect caviar as an ingredient is to source it carefully, use it wisely (the Langham turns any caviar it doesn’t sell into salt and pepper) and serve it’ n good Some chefs outside the upmarket choose an alternative fish yurse; others, like chef Chung Chow of Hawaiian restaurant Noreetuh in New York, reserve caviar for special occasions. “If we want to educate people about how caviar is produced, we need to depopulate it,” Chow said. “Having more users in the market is not going to solve the problem.” Aquitaine, in south-west France,

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