The day after the video of fish being roasted alive in a tavern in Karpathospublic outcry will not stop.

In connection with an unprecedented incident, a citizen filed a complaint with the AT. Karpathos and animal cruelty case filed.

OUR Yannis Kladas, professor of ichthyology-hydrobiology at the University of Patras, characterizes this event as unheard of, but at the same time inexplicable. As he explains in “K” “ythere is a very old and safe way to a painless death: plunge a freshly caught fish into ice water. This is the only proper way to stun them. We also know that immediate freezing prevents them from becoming stressed and therefore from changing color. For example, in fagri, good color is a very important sign of freshness and quality. There are signs of stress in fish related to color, appearance and fluids (hormones) they secrete. As for the live fish in the pan, how it tasted or what toxins it might have given off, I doubt there will be any scientific evidence.”

Mr. Kladas believes that cooking clams alive (they are usually boiled) is also wrong. “There are recipes that say, for example, blue crabs or lobsters must be dipped into boiling water alive in order for them to be tasty, but this ignores an important parameter: we are dealing with living things.”

“Terrible and completely out of our culture”

The moral and cultural aspect of the incident, which caused all animal protection organizations to talk about the “bullying” and torture of the animal, is perhaps the most important aspect.

“It’s horrible, to say the least, it’s clearly animal torture, and also something completely outside of our culture,” notes Angelos Redoulas, editor-in-chief of the magazine “Gastronomos”. “It reminds me of the viral videos released some time ago in which octopuses are fried ‘alive’ in the middle of a table by a group of Easterners who are laughing,” he says, adding: “The above image and behavior is not part of Greek culture.. In Greece we never cook anything live and generally don’t even do it with clams, crabs and other shellfish like they do in other countries. Let’s be clear that raw and fresh are different, because we also eat Kalloni sardines, a traditional product of Lesvos, raw and live are different. We even cook meat in Greece until there are no traces of blood.”

The aforementioned primitive culture was captured, says Mr. Redoulas, in the famous Psara fresco in Santorini, one of the most important prehistoric Aegean paintings. “The young man holds the tackle with the fish with both hands while she is dead. This is the only way to show them outside of their natural environment. Even on the boat, the Greek fishermen, in order to cook kakavia, made sure that the fish died in the right way.”

Mr. Redulas sets another parameter, no less important, this sustainability.

“Our food is nature’s gift to man. This also includes human labor – agriculture, fishing, etc. Our planet has reached this state because we do not respect it. I remember late Evy Vutsina, the most important researcher of Greek gastronomy, to tell us that even the way we peel an apple says a lot about us. If we teach our children how to clean it properly, leaving as little mess as possible, this contributes to our good behavior towards the world. Especially when we are dealing with living beings that have eyes and a mouth.

As for the question of how and why the video could have been leaked, Mr. Redoulas tries to give an interpretation: “maybe it reached the public by this common logic that everything is freely distributed on the Internet with the aim of making us laugh or let’s see to another of the many events that pass before our eyes. Food has not “escaped” this logic. I just hope someone didn’t eat that particular fish…”