On Dec 19, 9:21*am, I am Tosk wrote:
In article ,
says...







"Tim" wrote

It's thawed here too. *At least the chunk of Salmon and some Talapia
fish i took out of the freezer yesterday morning.

good cooking tonight!

reply: *Last night, it was tilapia with Scampi topping. *Love those little
individual fillets. *I steam them in a wok, they cook great. *Good way to
cook other fish, too. *Salmon is good on a soaked cedar plank, and soak the
plank with the same marinade you use for the salmon.

Mmmmmmmmm

Steve

Do you guys know how Talapia is raised? Do you know what it eats? Check
out the discovery channel- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

No more than a lot of other things.

"Environmentalists encourage eating tilapia. Oceans Alive ranks U.S.
farmed tilapia as an “eco-best” choice, meaning they don’t damage the
environment (through pollution of waters, reduction of biodiversity,
overharvesting, etc.). So does National Geographic’s Green Guide.

Tilapia are also lower in contaminants than other fish. Growseed says
that: “as concerns about mercury contamination in fish increases, pond-
raised tilapia are a safe toxin-free food because they do not build up
environmental pollutants in their meat. That’s why Co-op America
places tilapia squarely on the “safe” list.

But…um…do they actually eat poop?I have googled and googled and
googled, in search of answers to this question. It appears to me that
the TILAPIA EAT POOP folks were ultimately informed (directly or
indirectly) by the Vomit Island episode of the Dirty Jobs television
show, on the Discovery Channel. In this episode, tilapia are used to
clean the poo that has accumulated in the tanks of hybrid striped
bass. Fear not, though: not all farmed tilapia are fed on waste
matter. For a little reassurance, check out this guy in Maine.

How about in their natural environment? You won’t find many wild
tilapia in your grocery store, but in their natural enviornment, they
thrive on wide variety of natural food organisms, including plankton,
succulent green leaves, benthic organisms, aquatic invertebrates,
larval fish, detritus and decomposing organic matter. The key word
there is “detritus,” which includes all kinds of things, including,
most likely, fish waste.

So, yes. The answer, to all you TILAPIA EAT POOP Googlers, is
“sometimes.” Which maybe should turn me off to eating tilappia, but
the more I researched, the more I thought about other things that are
fed on disgusting things (like free-range chickens, which eat the bugs
out of cow poop; or mushrooms, which feed off decay; or really any
kind of food that takes organic fertilizer…including the tomatoes and
greenbeans and carrots I myself grew last summer, which were
fertilized with composted manure from a nearby horse farm…).

Waste is consumed in order to support new life: that’s what happens in
an ecosystem. I’d prefer that any day to ground meat that’s covered in
actual poop.

That said, the key to tilapia appears to be finding a quality source.
Given that they can thrive in low quality water, you’ll want to be
careful about not getting tilapia from a water source that is too low
quality. The Monterey Bay Aquarium (experts in this kind of thing)
says that farmed tilapia from U.S. should be a first choice; and
farmed tilapia from China should be a last choice. Indeed, earlier
this year, the FDA rejected a bunch of tilapia (and other seafood)
imported from China, due to concerns about recurrent contamination
from carcinogens and antibiotics. Kevin Fitsimmons, Professor of
Environmental Science at the University of Arizona, disagrees,
however, claiming that “the Chinese actually do a pretty good
job.” (I’m not sure if Dr. Fitsimmons read this, but I’d be curious
about his reaction)."