Breeding Non toxic Puffer Article

[Pufferpunk]

Can I come over for dinner?

[splitadams]

a few years ago my partner brought a snake not long after we went
to a pizza shop in the rocks which sold snake pizza, so naturally..
i had to have it, and it was a great idea, super tasty
ive also eaten horse, crocodile, heaps of kangaroo and emu
and im sure if the opportunity arises even tho i love them,
id still try fugu.

in japan theyve been eating fugu for a long time, nothings going to stop them
anytime soon, australia cant even stop them from coming into our waters to
whale, atleast once a month theres something about a japanese whaling boat
in our waters on the news.

the way i see it is, if you couldnt kill it yourself if you needed food.
dont buy it from the shop to eat it but also it is nice to know
that the meat your eating wasnt treated cruel or the peice that you were
eating wasnt the only peice cut from it, while the rest of the animal went to waste.

but still puffers could be going to waste alot worse then being eaten, ancient
egyptians used puffer fish for ball sports.

oh and for all the dolphin lovers here (not the australians alot of us tend to not like dolphins
due thinking theyre a shark when your at the beach) if youve been eating tuna from a can
your whole life the chances are youve eaten a dolphin too

[RTR]

Puffers in the wild are not always toxic. Even the puffers eaten as fugu. Puffers do not produce the toxin themselves, they get it is their diet, modify, it and store it. Captive puffers lose their toxin over time, just as do poison dart frogs.

What is viewed as food and what is untouchable is never more than cultural. We tend to eat or reject what were trained/enculturated to see as acceptable food, or we have decided individually to reject certain classes of potential food as unsuitable for a variety of reasons. Few of those negative choices actually have significant survival value in and of itself. But they still cannot be argued for or against. Taste (in almost anything) is not arguable, whether it is common to a culture or only to a smaller segment of the population - taste simply is not arguable, it is personal, period.

I have never eaten fugu and do not plan to do so either. But that is personal choice, period.

Humans have domesticated quite a few animals for food and other uses (food, transport, labor, companions - including pets). Only in recent times have many fish been so domesticated. Catfish, trout, carp (the only one with a long history) are well-known, but you can argue for Anglfish, some Cory catfish, guppies, and a non-trivial number of other hobby fish as being domesticated as they are now so many generation away from the wild stock as no longer potential candidates for release into the wild. There have been human-selected and selectively bred through so many generations that they are really not at all wild fish anymore. There is little means at the present to determine how much of their "wild" genome" is still present,or for that matter, what it was originally in some cases, and how much is mutant by human choice and selection. Dogs, cats, horses, cattle can all go feral, but are not truly wild, as they are not the same as the original wild stock - too many selections have occurred. If fugu really become domesticated in the future, they are unlikely to be the same as their wild forbears. So in that sense, argument is moot.

All JMHO, YMMV

[Flutter]

YMMV?

[splitadams]

yeah heard ferrets dont exist in the wild, theyre a domesticated version of a polecat

[RTR]

YMMV = Your Mileage May Vary. Likely a USA thing, posted on all cars with the required EPA estimates of fuel mileage.

Ferrets are alive and well in the wild,although the blackfooted ferret of the USA is endangered. The albino form domesticated in Europe is a selected mutation from the wild species, not a separate species. Most albinos are at significant disadvantage in the wild, but some not - such as the albino Clarias catfish in its native waters.

HTH (= Hope This Helps)

[riggers]

yeah heard ferrets dont exist in the wild, theyre a domesticated version of a polecat

Ferrets are indeed domesticated version of polecats, most likely the european polecat. The black-footed ferret is a different species to the domesticated ferret.

[Nick]

An argument for vegetarianism I frequently hear from anarchist, commie and other FAR leftists has nothing to do with treatment of the animals; to them the problem likes in that eating meat foods is wasteful, because mass meat farming both consumes grains that could feed at least ten times as many humans as the meat from the animals they now feed, and has nasty environmental effects for anyone living nearby.

This SOUNDS like good logic, as it's based on truths(meat farmed in the USA is fed on grains of higher quality to what people are actually eating in 3rd world and even some second world countries, and large farms are absolutely horrid for the local environment) - but it derives the wrong conclusion (if we don't eat meats, less animals will need to be farmed, those grains will feed the starving, and the wastes of the process will be lessened).

Firstly, it's illegal to sell grains of that grade for human consumption at all, and even if that were changed the domestic agricultural regulations and price-fixing that keep our farms from going bankrupt keep prices of ANY grains produced in the USA far, far too high for any of the starving of the world to afford, even if it could be magically teleported to them and no shipping costs and losses were involved.

But further consider that even if the grain was actually FREE, and a shipping company offered to move it around free(because evoking magical teleportation devices is only allowed once per rant), it wouldn't really do any good: starvation is a political problem, not an agricultural one, and generally the more we impose on that system, even if it's through charitable acts, the more screwed up things get. Countries that care about their people, or peoples who stayed connected to self-reliant subsistence living(or relearned it after having it taken from them by global imperialism in an attempt to add them to the reserve of industrial laborers, but promptly realized wageslavery SUCKS: However I must leave that rant dormant for now else it end up longer than this one) don't have large famines, for the most part.

Wartorn, haunted landscapes where anything you produce might be taken by a militia working for, or against, the current warlord the day it's harvested, that is a big source of famine. And if we bring them this grain, what would happen? They'd eat for a few weeks, then the militias would take it for their own use. Maniacs roaming around shooting at each other need food too, and produce nothing of value.

Even if they don't, lets say we send soldiers too, really go paternalistic on the place... then, what about the farmer that bravely arms up with a rusty AK that cost more than 1/4 of a harvest, and fired at every militia truck to keep them from coming near, risking life and limb the entire past year to protect the farm and crops that sustain his/her family? Those crops are now worthless, since it's free food for everyone who asks - the few who survived the militias by their own strength would be snuffed out by our "charity."

To examine the second part, what happens when meat consumption takes a dive? They don't produce less meat - the profit margins on the stuff are quite solid. What happens is the prices drop, and those that do eat meat eat more and better meat. So their is no appreciable change in the number of animals produced on these mass farms from successful vegetarian recruiting(The practice is a time-proven failure at making any large scale change), so their is no real reduction in environmental damage, either.(or in the number of animals raised and killed abusively, though that is a neither here nor there as far as the national politics go)

I don't care if someone is veg - but, be a vegetarian or vegan because you don't like how meat tastes, or because you feel guilty about being associated with the cruelty the animals endure, or because you were raised that way... let it be YOUR reason, not because you think it makes some kind of political point or you're a part of saving the world.

It's also an interesting point that, as RTR points out, the people in 3rd world countries so many Americans want to "save" by sending big boats of watermelons eat meats and animal products any chance they get. There, as was the case historically for the vast majority of farmers, livestock is raised on land that can only grow grass and scrub - which we can't even digest, never mind get milk, materials(leather/fur/wool/bone) and complete protein(meat) from. But a sheep gives you all of those things, all while consuming no resources in common with you other than water.

[J-P]

australia cant even stop them from coming into our waters to
whale, atleast once a month theres something about a japanese whaling boat
in our waters on the news.

Where are these Australian waters?

[riggers]

australia cant even stop them from coming into our waters to
whale, atleast once a month theres something about a japanese whaling boat
in our waters on the news.

Where are these Australian waters?

The whole way around Australia?

[J-P]

Just wondering why Australia was claiming jurisdiction in the antarctic which is a no mans land