Overcoming Prejudice Against Bish Names

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30129, 13 May 1963, Page 2

Overcoming Prejudice Against Bish Names

lßy a Reuter Correspondent] ROME. How do you get the world’s population to eat more fish? Names like catfish and dogfish scare away shoppers. Cheap prices make them suspicious. Appearances bulging eyes, whiskers, flatheads make them walk away. But if the name and the price are different, and the fish is cut up into fillets, there is an enormous difference in the public reaction.

This is the conclusion of an official of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation. Mr John Fridthjof of Copenhagen, has spent most of his career in trying to get people to eat more fish Speaking at his headquarters here, he said that in his native Denmark, the people shied away from eating "tender and savoury" catfish caught in Danish waters. “We just could not get people to eat it, much less buy it," he says: "Then we got the idea of filleting the fish, cutting off its head and selling only the clean, white, filleted meat. Also we gave it a new name—cutlet fish. The results were amazing." Fish are a valuable and little used source of food for combating hunger and undernourishment in the world.

Along with beans, peas, milk and meat, fish provide protein, the element most lacking in most of the world’s diet. Mr Fridthjof says: "Food from the sea makes up only about one per cent, of the world's diet. Most of the earth's people never have a chance to taste fish. "But often, even when it is available, people will shy away because of the local taboos, unfamiliarity, or the fish’s name or looks." Mr Fridthjof has been with the Food and Agriculture Organisation since 1951. Among countries he has served in are Chile, Morocco, and Senegal. While working in Chile, he found prejudice against merluza or hake because of- its price. It was too cheap. In Argentina and Uruguay this member of the cod fam-

ily was quite popular But in Chile it was so abundant that it was looked down on So he and his Chilean colleagues obtained a few hundred pounds of best quality merluza and set up a stand in the fish market in a Chilean coastal town. They divided the fish into two identical piles. On one pile they put up a sign announcing a normal price. On the other pile, they doubled the price. "At the end of the day we had sold all the high priced merluza. but had more than half the cheap pile left on our hands.” he says. “It was a real shame I cannot understand it.” In West Africa, United Nations experts are co-oper-ating with local governments to encourage the consumption of fish Unfortunately, Mr Fridthjof says, one of the commonest but best of local fish in West Africa is the dogfish. So he had the name changed to ‘‘Fish 45,” the number representing the dogfish’s protein content. Here in Italy a-delicacy of the Northern Adriatic is known as ‘‘peoci di mare”— Venetian dialect for “lice of the sea.” They are mussels.