“Fully Sustainable” Caviar? Get away!

Last week, my friend Darren started an interesting debate on LinkedIn. He raised the issue of the possible benefits of caviar from no-kill farms and asked if it was any good. The majority of the respondents stated that it was not very good as the required hormone injections did something peculiar to the eggs. One respondent did state that, like traditionally produced caviar, it could be good depending on the skill of the farming and processing.

To be honest, I have never actually tried it. One reason being is that I have never heard good reports about it, so I have never sought it out. However, my main reason is that I object to the abuse of the English language that takes place in the marketing of such caviar.

As the sturgeon is not killed, the caviar is sold as “fully sustainable” and “the only truly sustainable caviar”. This is clearly codswallop. I am told that there are over 90 definitions of “sustainable” employed by HM Government, but I bet that none of them stretch the meaning as far as not killing an animal used for food production.

Think about it, if we did not kill and utilise our dry dairy cows, old laying hens, infertile ewes and beef cows, the world would soon be over run by old animals consuming precious resources and producing nothing in return. The very opposite of “sustainable”!

If people want to produce caviar using hormone injections, fine but please dont call it “sustainable”. I am very comfortable with the concept of rearing a fish, killing it, processing the eggs for caviar and utilising the meat. I am not very comfortable with the concept of abusing the English language for inaccurate marketing.