Now with less poison!

[Brunhidden]

The fugu, prized yet poisonous. now without poison!

Japanese fish farmers have now farmed a benign fugu with no poison in its liver, which is supposedly its tastiest part. although, without the risk of death it loses some of its allure....

issue is that the Japanese officials are still refusing to lift the ban on buying/selling fugu livers, refusing to hear 'but this one isn't poisonous'. rumors abound this is because the officials know that theres only one district in japan qualified to process fugu livers for sale around the world, and a bistro in new york isnt going to send away for a Japanese carved fugu when they can just dice up their own safely.

[Jigsaw Forte]

Even if it isn't poisonous:

• It can't be immediately "safe to eat"; even if it's not enough that it can KILL you anymore, that can't possibly mean that there's absolutely no chance of food poisoning otherwise.
• I thought the general idea of sushi was that it was done by trained chefs, not that any old yokel with a knife and some raw meat can make it. Surely they would make MORE money training the chefs and selling the fish worldwide than they would keeping it limited to a single province?

[Alondro]

But... but the tetrodotoxin was the best part!   

Actually, the toxin is produced by bacteria, likely a species of Vibrio in the pufferfish, and the fish (and some other animals as well) can accumulate the toxin in their tissues because their neurologic voltage-gated fast sodium channels have a different pore amino acid composition and thus the toxin cannot bind and block the action potential.  There is no antidote for the toxin.  The heart still receives the signal to beat, as the cardiac pacemaker nodes contain slow sodium channels which are unaffected; but the cardiac muscle itself is paralyzed and can't function.

The toxin is so deadly that only 25 mg is needed to kill an average adult.  That is by ingestion, though.  If it were to be injected, as little as 0.5 mg is lethal.

[Zina]

Honestly, fugu doesn't taste like anything special. The whole allure was the chance you could die, and the thrill that came with it. Without it, fugu is just another fish.

[Alondro]

Yeah, it's just another example of humans' inexplicable desire to risk their lives for thrills.

I have evolved beyond such foolishness!   

*Zina takes a shot*

I am SOO going to give you cirrhosis!   

[Brunhidden]

i agree with zina, the whole appeal was that its dangerous

and of course it must be noted that genetic engineering had no part in this- only the vigorous application of the animal husbandry skill 

[Toric]

Yeah, it's just another example of humans' inexplicable desire to risk their lives for thrills.

Yup, it's one of life's great mysteries.

There are many things you can point out as proof that the human is not smart. But my personal favorite would have to be that we invented the helmet. What was happening, apparently, was that we were involved in a lot of activities that were cracking our heads. We chose not to avoid doing these activities but, instead, to come up with some sort of device to help us continue enjoying our head-cracking lifestyles. The helmet. And even that didn't work because not enough people were wearing them so we had to come up with the helmet law. Which is even stupider, the idea behind the helmet law being to preserve a brain whose judgment is so poor, it does not even try to stop the cracking of the head it's in.

I love SeinLanguage.

At any rate, it will be interesting to see just how tasty fugu proves to be once the exotic element of deadly poison is removed from the equation. I would almost bet money that wild fugu will still be more in demand than "safe" fugu.