Tokyo Gourmets in Japan may soon be able to feast safely on puffer-fish liver ___
a delicacy currently banned because of the toxins it contains.The dish has been illegal since 1983; before that hundreds of people died every year after eating it. But Tamao Noguchi ,a fisheries scientist at Nagasaki University, is trying to get it back on the menu.
Puffer fish(Takifugu) are believed to accumulate poison by eating starfish and other toxic creature that live at the bottom of the sea. To produce toxin-free fish, Noguchi's group raised about 5,000 of them in nets suspended ten metters above the sea floor or in tanks with purified sea water. On 13 May at a meeting of the Food Hygenics Society of Japan in Tokyo,the researchers reported that all the fish were poison-free.
The group has patented the technique and hopes to create a special district where people can feast on the plump organs.Team member Osamu Arakawa denied that the lack of the poison , which attracts some people with its lip-numbing effect , would drive away consumers."It's delicious even without the tingling effect," he says.