A Rose by any other name…would be a Peruvian Sardine?

I’ve spent the majority of this weekend sorting through papers, which, as devastatingly boring as that sounds, finally inspired me to pick up on this long neglected forum.

Many of the research papers will present themselves in future posts, but one group fell together on my pile of ‘look-at-me-now’s…and the theme, funnily enough, was not nutrition, taste or science, but branding.

The articles were: “What’s in a Name: Anchovy Promotion” by The Fish Site News Desk, from a site of the same name; “A Slimehead by any other name” by Tara Kimura of CBC news; and a Newsday news story about PETA’s new campaign to rename fish “Sea Kittens”.

Our story starts in Peru, where the major exporters association (ADEX) is suggesting the promotion of anchovies (Engraulis Ringeris) as “Peruvian Sardine” to increase its international demand. Which of course sparked my thought: are sardine and anchovies the same thing? Happily, a Washington Post article “A Tale of Two Fishes” By Robert L. Wolke, confirmed what I had believed. No, they are not. “There is no single species named sardine. Sardines are born the moment a label reading "Sardines" is affixed to a can of small fish. They were named after the Italian Mediterranean island of Sardinia, which, like most islands, has a long-standing reputation for being surrounded by fish. A sardine can be almost any small, fatty fish, but most often is related to the herring.” And as for the anchovy: “There are about 125 species of anchovy, but only one dominates the culinary scene: the Mediterranean Engraulis encrasicolus.” So not only are they a completely different animal (pardon the pun), but do the ADEX folks really think the gastronomic world won’t care?

Then again, maybe they won’t…the CBC story revealed that the ‘dogfish’ has been renamed ‘Rock Salmon’, ‘slimehead’ is now ‘Orange Roughy’, and the popular ‘Chilean Sea Bass’ is actually ‘patagonian toothfish’… and these rebranded beauties have been flying off the shelves to the extent that demand has lead to overfishing!

Does it really matter what the fish is called? It does when the rebranding is an attempt to sidestep regulations…and more importantly, as a food lover I would argue, it matters when what I am buying is not what I think it is.

But today’s gold star for rebranding goes to PETA. Their new campaign to rename fish as “Sea Kittens” is truly creative. On their website -among other fun things (like bedtime stories)- you can “create you own Sea Kitten”, picking from 4 different species of fish (trout, salmon, tuna, and flounder) which you can dress in anything from a tiara to a leather biker jacket. I am a bit skeptical that this will be more effective than simply watching “Finding Nemo” a bunch of times...but I applaud them for coming up with such an amusing way to make people aware of both species-consciousness related to overfishing/eating high on the food chain and the fact that fish can feel pain.