Fugu cooking licence differs from each prefecture. In some prefectures, you need to take lessons and tests and in some you only need lessons. This causes the knowledge level of each licensed Fugu cook differ. Today you can not use your licence from your prefecture in other. For example, if you try to get a Fugu cooking licence in Yamaguchi prefecture, you need to take lessons and then also take the tests to show you can differentiate the poison locations of each Fugu as well as your Fugu processing skill. But you try to get a licence in Okayama, you do not need to take any test. 

There has been a strong voice from the fugu industry to have a unified fugu cooking licence.

This news should not treated as a Japan only news. The blow fishes are mixing here and there all over the world.  (We also think any other plants/animals which have some poisonous parts can also have the same problem as this mixed Fugu issue. ) The world needs to be more aware of the new type of risk in our food! We still want to eat blow fish with no worry.

There should be a world wide system to make sure that we are not eating something lethal!

Have you eaten / Do you like blow fish? How was it? What do you think about this news?

Source: Sankei News report 

Ever tried to eat Fugu? Fugu is a blow fish which is considered to be one of the most expensive and tasty foods in Japan.

We also love this fish. It looks cute and also tasty. We can not really afford this fish every day. If you go to some restaurant to eat a proper Fugu fish, it may be around 100USD or more per person.

The tricky part with this fish is that it has poison in its body. This poisiton is lethal. It makes more difficult to cook this fish because each type has poison in different parts of body.

This is why a cook needs a special Fugu cooking licence to cook. To get the Fugu cooking licence, the cook needs to learn about the positions of the poisons of each type of Fugu and how to remove and cook. ( This also increases the cost of cooking.) 

After the cook took away the poisonous part(s), she/he must put them into a special garbage box with a lock so that no mistake happens. Under the current situation, we still see some people dying of the Fugu poisons (mistakes happen, you know...).

Today we heard of a scary news. There is higher risk of blow fish poisoning these days. This is because due to the changing climate, some blow fishes move to the area where they did not live and get mixed with the local blow fish which have always been there. This creates a mixed blow fish which has poisonous part where the cook with a licence has not learnt. The cook with a Fugu cooking licence is supposed to not cook a Fugu whose type is unknown. Yet, there seems a blow fish which looks exactly like one type of Fugu yet actually mixed and has positions in different parts! This means that there is a risk that even a licensed cook can not get rid of the poison correctly.

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