Now, Chinese fish authorities have responded: That’s perfectly O.K. with them.
Chinese regulators said last week that rainbow trout can be sold as salmon, according to new standards set by a government-affiliated fish association and 13 commercial fisheries. To justify the change in definition, officials cited biology: Salmon and rainbow trout belong to the same fishy family. They also required sellers to note the exact type of fish elsewhere on the label.
Still, the fuzzy definition touched a nerve in a country with a long history of food labeling issues and a vast population of increasingly sophisticated consumers. Thousands took to the internet to blast regulators for lowering food standards instead of fixing the issue. Some declared they would never eat salmon again.
Even patrons at a sushi restaurant said that they could no longer trust salmon enough to eat it raw.
“If I come across especially cheap salmon that is hard to tell apart from rainbow trout, I probably will not order it,” Ma Xinyi, a 20 year-old college student, said. She has eaten only cooked salmon since news of the salmon-trout switching began to circulate three months ago.
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