The Fish in Filet-O-Fish Sandwiches at Risk

Posted by Erin Zimmer, September 10, 2009 at 3:30 PM

Most deep-fried fish sandwiches from chain restaurants--including Denny's, Long John Silver's, and most certainly McDonald's--use hoki, a pretty ugly, bug-eyed fish found deep in the waters around New Zealand. But that may change, according to this New York Times piece.

Drops in hoki spawn and damaged ecosystems have inspired the World Wildlife Fund to fight for reduced hoki fishing. In response, the New Zealand ministry has cut the allowable commercial catch quota from roughly 275,000 tons to 100,000 tons, which means McDonald's had to shrink its usual consumption of about 15 million pounds of hoki to 11 million pounds per year.

"It could go up if the quota goes up," said McDonald's senior director of global purchasing Gary Johnson. While rooting for the overfishing of hoki is probably not the right move here, some of us are definitely rooting for the preservation of the Filet-O-Fish. Would it taste the same with a different fish? Perhaps. Either way, this article confirms that the Filet-O-Fish does in fact contain fish, which is good.

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