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The story
Golden eye snapper (kinmedai) caught off the coast of Shizuoka Prefecture was mistakenly labeled as a “product of Shizuoka” instead of Aichi Prefecture, home to the port where it was actually landed — and the Numazu Ganyudo Fisheries Cooperative received administrative guidance for violating the Food Labeling Act. On the thread, while some argued that breaking the law simply isn’t okay, far more commenters pointed out how hard it is to draw the line, with remarks like “fish don’t know prefectural or national borders” and “the whole idea of origin labeling is nonsense to begin with.”
On top of that, commenters flagged that the “roughly 370,000 tons” figure cited in the original article is wildly out of line with Japan’s total annual kinmedai catch (only a few thousand tons nationwide), sparking a side discussion fact-checking the news report’s numbers themselves.
On August 20, Shizuoka Prefecture issued administrative guidance to the Numazu Ganyudo Fisheries Cooperative for violating the Food Labeling Act, after it mistakenly told business operators that kinmedai landed off the coast of Shizuoka was a “product of Shizuoka Prefecture.”
According to the prefecture, officials conducted on-site inspections of the cooperative three times between June 25 and August 6.
The inspections found that kinmedai landed off the coast of Shizuoka should have been labeled for business operators using the fishing-ground name (off Shizuoka Prefecture), or, if that wasn’t feasible, the name of the landing port (Katahara Fishing Port) or the prefecture where that port is located (Aichi Prefecture) — but it had instead been mistakenly labeled as a “product of Shizuoka Prefecture.”
Source: newsdig.tbs.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Breaking the law is a no-no, though.
It's just a small mistake, come on.
Even if it's technically illegal, what a hassle to make a fuss over.
As long as us poor folks get to eat, that's all that matters.
Fish don't know prefectural or national borders.
Chanting the sutra won't fill your belly (pun on "hannya" the sutra's name and "hara," meaning stomach).
You've got to go back to the original source — the Suttanipata (the "Group of Discourses").
They probably caught it off Shizuoka but landed it at a fishing port in Aichi.
That's probably exactly why they got called out.
Wouldn't farmed fish also get labeled as a product of whatever prefecture?
Not 100% sure on the details though.
I wonder if they're actually hauling it overland on purpose?
Feels like it might just go straight to the wholesaler, kind of like dropshipping.
It really is Numazu Bay, after all.
If a deep-sea fish like kinmedai were labeled "product of Aichi," I'd actually suspect THAT was the fake label.
Wouldn't processing it (initial prep work) in Shizuoka, even if caught off Shizuoka's coast, make it a product of Shizuoka?
Probably did it on purpose to draw in customers.
Now on sale!
"Domestic" eel.
Makes no sense to me.
If it circulates labeled just "offshore," the value of the prefecture's brand name drops — that's probably why the cooperative didn't want that.
There's no way 370,000 tons of it could be sold as "product of Shizuoka."
> At least approximately 370,000 tons of kinmedai between April 15, 2024 and July 5, 2026.
Other outlets don't have the "10,000" (man) in the figure, so that version is probably the correct one.
Funny how Yahoo News commenters go on about the law being wrong but nobody calls out the 370,000-ton figure lol
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/dcb96c7f19d85763ae569d4e79d1c96f602b87eb/comments?order=newer
And ironically, in another article that correctly says "36 tons," some people are deliberately inflating it to "360,000 tons."
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/f6328734195fcb1176d52e57b4eeaf5b83b03197/comments
I bet Nagano Prefecture would lose it (also landlocked).
Let's just go with "Saitama Fishing Port" or something (Saitama's landlocked too).
Re: #187
Since it's a landlocked prefecture, skip the administrative guidance and go straight to criminal penalties.
Apparently they sometimes deliberately land the catch at a faraway port too.
Pacific saury, bonito — that kind of thing.
They're migratory fish to begin with, after all.
> Kinmedai landed off the coast of Shizuoka Prefecture should be labeled using the fishing-ground name (off Shizuoka), or, if that's not feasible, the landing port's name (Katahara Fishing Port) or the prefecture it belongs to (Aichi Prefecture)
I don't really get how they're defining the terms here.
What exactly counts as "landing" (mizuage)?
Do they "land" it once off the coast of Shizuoka, then "land" it again at Katahara Fishing Port?
Or does "landing" happen only once, whether it's done out at sea or at the port?
"Landing" (mizuage) basically means unloading the catch — it's what happens at the fishing port.
This article uses "landing" (mizuage) to describe both hauling the fish from the sea onto the boat (i.e., catching it) and unloading it from the boat onto the dock — which is exactly what's causing the confusion.
That's what Professor Gemini told me, anyway.
Listing the actual coordinates alongside it would be nice, though.
Background and Key Points
Japan’s Food Labeling Act (食品表示基準) treats fresh seafood differently from farmed or processed goods: wild-caught fish must carry the name of the fishing ground where it was actually caught (e.g., “off Shizuoka”), and only when that’s impractical may sellers substitute the landing port’s name or the prefecture that port sits in. Kinmedai (golden eye snapper) is a deep-water fish long associated with Numazu, a Shizuoka port city whose “Numazu kinmedai” brand commands a premium at market — which is why a cooperative there mislabeling Aichi-landed fish as “Shizuoka” reads less like consumer deception and more like brand-protection gone wrong; there was no food-safety issue, and “administrative guidance” (行政指導) is a soft compliance nudge, not a fine or prosecution.
The thread didn’t really split over whether the mislabeling happened — that’s not in dispute — but over whether the rule makes sense at all. A small minority insisted a violation is a violation regardless of scale, but the dominant view treated prefecture-of-origin labeling for a migratory species as inherently arbitrary, since the fish itself crosses no jurisdictional lines. A separate, almost unrelated argument broke out over the article’s claim of “370,000 tons” of kinmedai, which posters correctly noted dwarfs Japan’s entire annual national catch (only a few thousand tons) — very likely a reporting error for “37 tons,” suggesting the news source itself may be less reliable than the regulatory finding it’s reporting on.
What’s easy to miss is that “landing” (mizuage) is being used in the original notice to mean both hauling the catch aboard at sea and unloading it at port — an ambiguity in the rule’s own wording that the posters flagged but never saw officially resolved.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Society] Kinmedai Landed Off Shizuoka Prefecture Mistakenly Labeled “Product of Shizuoka Prefecture” — Numazu Ganyudo Fisheries Cooperative Given Administrative Guidance for Food Labeling Act Violation.”
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