Caviar is one of the most expensive foods in the world. Selling up to $ 35,000 per kilogram, it is praised and cheered by celebrities around the world. But the taste gained. Apparently, caviar was not always valuable. By the 19th century, sturgeon species in the US were so common that there were accounts for the supply of caviar to free saloons, such as nuts.
In Europe, fishers would lay eggs for their pigs or leave them on the shore to spoil. What changed? Like real champagne, caviar does not come from anywhere. This, for example, is not caviar. To get the real thing, it has to be eggs from sturgeon. There are 27 species worldwide in North America, Europe, and Asia. But maybe not for long.
Arne Ludwig: In this case, the sturgeon will die because the people overcame their people and destroyed their habitats. In 2010, the International Union for Conservation of Nature listed 18 species on the Red List of Endangered Species, making sturgeon one of the world's most endangered species. But a list like this is sour. On the other hand, they can help protect sturgeons from further human decline. On the other hand, the less common the caviar becomes, the less likely we are to get enough of it. There is actually an economic theory that explains this. It is called a rare value thesis and describes how "rarity increases the value of an item." Sturgeon can weigh several thousand pounds and produce hundreds of pounds of roe at a time.
The world record belongs to the beluga sturgeon weighing 2,520 pounds and yielding 900 roe. Today, it will cost about half a million dollars. It was not until the 20th century that the freshwater fish and their eggs became an unusual species. Pollution poisoned their water, and dams blocked their breeding grounds above the river. They had no place to breed and continued to be overfished to get their meat and roe. In addition, it takes 8-20 years for a woman to become sexually mature, depending on the type. They can produce millions of eggs at a time, but the odds are that only one will survive to adulthood. Eventually, the number of sturgeons could not keep up with the demand, and their popular eggs became a treasure trove of luxury food. Today, caviar imports and exports are closely regulated in the US, which is part of why they are so expensive.
Deborah Keane: People forget that every single egg, each of these eggs, is removed by hand. Now, remember, we are facing the threat of extinct marine species. So basically, it's like eating and dealing with edible ivory. That is what is most controlled. That is why today, most caviar comes from sturgeon farms. Deborah Keane: Little did I know that by 2011, all wild caviar would be banned worldwide. When I started, there were six farms globally, and only two produced caviar in the world, and that was in 2004. Now, there are 2,000 farms. One farm, in particular, in China called Kaluga Queen, produces 35% of the world's caviar. Caviar is harvested through an ancient Russian and Iranian system, which involves killing fish and extracting eggs. Some farms are experimenting with a different process, which does not involve the killing of fish. It's called undressing. Fish are injected with a hormone that stimulates their desire to release eggs. Farmers have been doing this for many years, but not to get caviar - to produce more fish. It wasn’t until recently that people started filming these items and selling them as caviar.
Dmitrijs Tracks: The great thing is that yes, the fish are always alive. You have minimal impact on fish because you do it very quickly. He pulls the fish out of the water and puts it in a special catch. The fish have already started to breed, so all you need to do is press the stomach, massage the abdomen, and the caviar will just come out of the fish. The non-existent idea to kill caviar is commendable, but it still has to hold on. In any case, with existing caviar farms, this gives several wild sturgeons a chance to recover. But whether that happens or not depends very much on us.
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