You’ve been told all “Line-caught” is good , right? – No
One of the more regular questions that I am asked is what defines genuine sustainable and ethical line-caught product. The product being caught in this vision is line-caught but nowhere near ethically in my opinion.
These mass-poling (pole and line) operations are regularly utilised by canners of tuna and fall well-short of sustainable and ethically-caught product on many levels, but the three main ones being: · The quality of the product is very poor · It is incredibly stressful and inhumane · To qualify as ethical, surely you must be adding value, such that you are maximising the return/quality for the resource. This technique shown here actually strips value from the resource by ten or even more. So in practical terms, if this same product were to be genuinely Iki-jime line-caught by an artisanal operator it would attract potential pricing at least ten times greater (for premium quality Iki-jime product) than it will via this mass-poling technique going en-masse into a can. So, beware “Line-caught” can also be mass-caught guys.
