A Food Scientist Weighs In on the Abandoned Fish Sauce Terrorizing a Canadian Town
The Abandoned Fish Sauce Terrorizing a Small Canadian Town
A defunct fish sauce factory in St. Mary's, Newfoundland, has been leaking a putrid odor for over two decades. With 900,000 liters of fermented capelin sauce to clean up, a food scientist explains the chemistry behind the stench and speculates on the flavor of this 20-year-old batch.
I would 100 percent taste the forbidden fish sauce. I would do it for science.
- peri-cl
I recall reading there were zoning laws in the classical era about where you could manufacture garum (the Roman fish condiment). Here's one attributable example I could find, from the tail end of the Eastern empire. This is 2.4.22 in the Hexabiblos (1344–1345) of the Byzantine Constantine Harmenopoulos of Thessalonica; it legislates a 555-meter exclusion zone.
The archive.org page I linked is in Byzantine Greek with a Latin translation. I've quoted the Greek part here, and I used Deepseek V4 Flash for OCR and machine translation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constantine_Harmenopoulos
https://archive.org/details/constharmenopul00heimgoog/page/2... ("Ἐπαρχιχὸν ΠΕΡῚ ΓΑΡΕΨΩΝ" / "Edictum DE GARI COCTORIBUS")
> "22. Ἡ τέχνη τῶν γαρεψῶν καὶ ἡ τῶν τυροποιῶν οὐ τὴν τυχοῦσαν ποιεῖ τοῖς παρακειμένοις βλάβην· πολλὴ γὰρ ἡ ἀπ᾽ αὐτῆς ἀτμὶς δυσώδης τε ἀμέτρως ἐστὶ καὶ ἐπιβλαβὴς ἐπὶ πολὺ διάστημα. Ὅθεν χρὴ τοὺς τοιούτους ἅπασαν μὲν πόλιν μὴ οἰκεῖν μηδὲ κώμην. Εἰ δὲ χρεία τούτων εἴη πρὸς τὰς χρήσεις τῶν πόλεων καὶ τῶν κωμῶν, ἀφεστάναι στάδια τούτους δεῖ τρία. Εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ ὡς ταῦτα πάντα τὰ προειρημένα ἐπὶ τῶν ἐκ νέου κατασκευαζόντων εἴρηται· εἰ δὲ χάρται εἰσὶ παλαιοὶ ἢ καὶ δουλεία τις προλαβοῦσα, κεχρῆσθαι δεῖ τοῖς ἐξ ἀρχῆς περὶ αὐτῶν συμπεφωνημένοις."
> "The craft of the salt‑fish merchants and that of the cheesemakers causes no ordinary harm to those nearby; for the vapour arising from it is exceedingly foul‑smelling and harmful over a great distance. Hence such persons ought not to dwell […]
- anon84873628
Sounds like the Canadian Food Inspection agency screwed the town out of spite. Like they had a target on Ngo's back. Anyone have more details? From the linked Eater article:
>He suggests that a prior conflict with the CFIA over product labeling motivated them to close the factory before the inspection began. Ngo claims that he had been vocal about their interactions, and speculates “if they shut [us] down, nobody makes any complaints anymore.”
>After the government-run lab found Ngo’s product to be safe, he went on to win a court case and an appeal against the government. Even after those victories, the CFIA moved to restrict the sales of his product to the province of Newfoundland. “If I sell there, who will use my product?” Ngo says, pointing out the small population of Newfoundland and its non-existent Vietnamese community. “I could sell maybe one or two cases a month[...] we can’t survive.” The CFIA declined to comment, citing the amount of time that has passed since filing its initial complaint.
They could have stopped production in the moldy factory but allowed sale of the remaining product.
- comrade1234
There's a farmers market here in Zurich where some Italians drive up and sell Italian products like cheeses, sausages, etc. but one thing I buy from them I've never seen anywhere else - they are rotten salted anchovies packed with peppercorns. Stink super bad and are falling apart but when you're making a sauce you drop one in and the anchovy dissolves and delivers tons of umami - glutamates - and you no longer smell the rotten fish smell. I'm sure professional chefs must know about these.
I keep them in baggies in the freezer so that they don't stink up the fridge.
- bhouston
Isn't the ocean filled with salt and already knows how to biologically degrade fish? I sort of think that you could deposit this at sea somehow, just need to spread it out sufficiently.
I am sure I am overlooking something that would lead to an unintended ecological disaster.
- Symbiote
Since this is just salted, fermented fish, which the scientist in the article claims he would like to taste, why does it need to be buried in plastic? Why not slowly pour it into a sewer, over the course of several months?