There is a fair amount of information about these fish with the common names as noted by catmandoo above: swai, pangus, pangus catfish, pongas, bocourti, river cobbler, panga, or other names, they are generally fish from south east Asia that compete with US channel catfish; scientific name of
Pangasius pangasius.
http://fishbase.sinica.edu.tw/summary/speciessummary.php?id=292The government is enforcing laws mislabeling these fish as grouper and are often now called "farm raised grouper". I've eaten it frequently and it has always tasted good (most recently cooked as "blackened" in Florida last week) and I've never had any ill affects so far. IMO they taste better with milder and slightly sweeter flavor than channel catfish. I can recognize the cooked fillet as it is very white, flakey, slightly soft texture with a very few of the threads or fine strings in the flesh that are characteristic of channel catfish. I asked the manager if the fish was swai and he said they were pangas and they called it "farm raised grouper" because it can not legeally be called grouper. Some are saying they do not trust the fillet quality since the fish are grown using questionable methods in S.E.Asia.
http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/021307/met_7863256.shtml http://www.sptimes.com/2007/06/05/Southpinellas/Restaurateurs_say_sto.shtmlThis is an interesting post about farm raised fish from another forum.
Quote:
The ratio of "good" vs "bad" long chain fatty acids in farmed fish depend on the species of fish that you are talking about and the type of food that it is fed. Farmed fish such as talapia and catfish, which are fed mostly vegetable based foods supplemented with plant oils, do show elevated levels of undesirable omega-6 LC fatty acids than their wild counterparts. However, farmed marine species such as salmon and cobia are still fed food pellets that contain fish proteins and fish oils. They typically show similar ratios of omega-3 to omega-6 fatty acids as their wild counterparts.
There has been a lot of effort put into finding substitutes for fish oils and fish meal in the aquaculture industry. The price of both commodities has gone up. There is of course an ecological downside to depleting forage species (fishing down in the food chain) that is important to us sport fishermen. In addition, some sources of fish oil have been contaminated with PCBs and other lipid soluble toxins. When these contaminated oils are included in fish food, the toxins accumulate in the fish.
There is a lot of misinformation put out by groups that oppose aquaculture. Some of it is valid, but a lot of it doesn't make sense. For example, they like to bring up the fact that it takes 3 lb of forage fish to produce 1 lb of farmed salmon. OK, but how many pounds of forage fish do they think it takes to produce 1 lb of wild salmon that have to swim thousands of miles to feed and spawn in the natural environment? The answer is not known. But you can be sure that it is at least an order of magnitude greater than it take to feed confined farmed fish.
The fish oil contamination problem could be easily solved by international agreements on the allowable level of toxins in fish meal and fish oil. The FDA regulates fish oil supplements for human consumption, but not fish food.
Plant or single cell substitutes for marine fish oils are being developed and tested now. Once the aquaculture industry gets around the requirement for forage fish to feed farmed marine species, the ocean and our fisheries would benefit greatly from fish farming.
Aquaculture already provides over 50% of the seafood that we eat. Like just about anything else that people do, there is going to be some environmental damage. But if it's done smart, the impact can be less than that of commercial fishing.
If anyone wants to read some science on this topic, here is a pretty good review:
http://www.pnas.org/content/106/36/15103.full.pdf+htmlend quote
__________________
