Future Certification guidlines {wink}

[Anonymous]

hdtran - I thought I just answerred that, yes, almost all imported fish are single bagged, with a few exceptions, ie. sm moray eels (which can be collected by hand at night, so no problem there)

 

[hdtran]

Woops, didn't catch your post, GreshamH...

Got it, exporter-to-importer is single-bagged.

Let me think about how to modify my simulation so that I can enter, say, 750,000 damsels at 20%, 150,000 tangs at 40%, and 100,000 angels at 10%. There's a very easy way to do it because I know the math, but it would be unconvincing.

(Of course, no one is going to believe a purely numerical exercise anyway (insert smilie here) )

 

[Kalkbreath]

Kalk, You implied that most of the samples on aquarium fish were taken in 1996. Actually, there were 601 fish tested in 1996, 570 in 1997, 3167 in 1998, 2128 in 1999, and 2681 in 2000 reported in the published CDT paper.

Peter Rubec

I cant follow you math ?.......if 2681 fish in 2000 averaged 29% and 2128 fish averaged 18% in 1999 and 3167 fish in 1998 averaged 8% for cyanide present.....then how can the remaining 1171 fish from 1997 and 1996 bring the average for all years to 25%?Also if more fish were sampled in 1996 might the percent of fish present have changed ......... Second, if some of the species were weighted with more fish sampled for those species collected in greater volume.....that would leave almost half of the species withonly one or two individuals representing that species? One or two fish over a period of five years?

 

[Kalkbreath]

Let me sort of quote myself with a hypothetical procedure:

(1) All fish being exported are bagged individually (presumably the way it's done now)
(2) All individual bags have a bar code (adds $0.01 per bag)
(3) A computer program chooses randomly 384 numbers out of the bar codes (adds $25K per year for computer, bar code scanners, divided by N fish) per year
(4) If the bag scans "yes" for testing (unknown to collector until it's at the warehouse), the bag is pulled out and tested per CDT procedure.
(5) If the fish tests negative, continue as usual, but
(6) If the fish tests positive, close down all exports.

As a consumer, I'd be willing to pay a higher price for fish, if the procedure is as outlined above. I'm willing to accept the risk that up to 5% of the collection would be unclean, and slip by the sampling procedure.

The beauty with random sampling (SPQC, etc) is that it does work. That's why your 2000 model year car is far more reliable than the 1973 model year. You don't need to determine "how many damsels, how many puffers." You never know whether you're about to test a damsel, a mandarin, or a tang. But in car-speak, you know that if a spot check reveals even a paint defect, the assembly line is shutdown, and then, everyone (temporarily) loses profit until the problem is fixed.

I'd be happy (on a PM basis) to run numerical simulations for anyone who's interested. Tell me how many hypothetical damsels you're exporting, how many hypothetical tangs, and how many hypothetical angels. Also tell me, of the hypothetical fish, how many are hypothetically unclean. I'll have the computer program (written in MATLAB, for those of you interested) generate the numbers, pull out 384 samples, and give you how many positives it pulls. I'll even give you my code for you to run yourself, and point you at some alternative freeware.

Regards,

Hy

About 2000 boxes of fish from the Philippines will land in LAX this Sunday.........within the 2000 boxes is about 100 fish per box {mostly damsels} You really think taking out 200,000 fish one by one and scanning each one individually is possible? Even if the scanning is done when the fish are still in PI .....You would have to have a climate controlled building ......the boxes would need to be separated by each group of exporter and collectors. Each box would take about one minute to scan all 100 bags ,.{Thats 2000 minutes }..The labeling of boxes would get mixed up or the fish would need to be replaced into the same box . Anyone who has ever boxed fish realzes that sometimes the fish dont refit into the box again depending how you arrange the bags }Add one more minute.}{now were at 4000 minutes }. Then resealed heatpacks in place.and hope you have not missed you airplane {like the airlines will wait} All this for a cargo which has a value of about 30$ a box .

 

[Anonymous]

kalk wrote:

All this for a cargo which has a value of about 30$ a box .

are you really a moron, or do you just play one on rdo?

:roll:

 

[Anonymous]

Kalk, You implied that most of the samples on aquarium fish were taken in 1996. Actually, there were 601 fish tested in 1996, 570 in 1997, 3167 in 1998, 2128 in 1999, and 2681 in 2000 reported in the published CDT paper.

Peter Rubec

I cant follow you math ?.......if 2681 fish in 2000 averaged 29% and 2128 fish averaged 18% in 1999 and 3167 fish in 1998 averaged 8% for cyanide present.....then how can the remaining 1171 fish from 1997 and 1996 bring the average for all years to 25%?Also if more fish were sampled in 1996 might the percent of fish present have changed ......... Second, if some of the species were weighted with more fish sampled for those species collected in greater volume.....that would leave almost half of the species withonly one or two individuals representing that species? One or two fish over a period of five years?

i'd suggest the prudent thing for you to do before you continue, then, is learn basic math

followed by basic grammar, and punctuation, lessons

:lol:

 

[Anonymous]

and i hate your avatar, too

 

[Kalkbreath]

kalk wrote:

All this for a cargo which has a value of about 30$ a box .

are you really a moron, or do you just play one on rdo?

:roll:

Still hurling insults instead of answers ......What do you disagree with ? One hundred damsels from PI cost 20 to thirty bucks 20cents to thirty cents per damsel FOB .......fifty clownfish at 75c .....about 38 bucks per box ........fifteen bi color angels at $2 bucks each is thirty bucks ......If I am moronic ......then you are definitely sophomoric because time and time I easily prove you have little true knowledge of this industry. What i say on this board is so shocking that most simply cannot fathom that what I say true .The truth in this business is so protected that finding the truth on you own is almost impossible . You had no idea that fish are that cheap ? And if Mary and Steve are not about to tell you the truth ........what else are they keeping from you ?

 

[Kalkbreath]

Kalk, You implied that most of the samples on aquarium fish were taken in 1996. Actually, there were 601 fish tested in 1996, 570 in 1997, 3167 in 1998, 2128 in 1999, and 2681 in 2000 reported in the published CDT paper.

Peter Rubec

I cant follow you math ?.......if 2681 fish in 2000 averaged 29% and 2128 fish averaged 18% in 1999 and 3167 fish in 1998 averaged 8% for cyanide present.....then how can the remaining 1171 fish from 1997 and 1996 bring the average for all years to 25%?Also if more fish were sampled in 1996 might the percent of fish present have changed ......... Second, if some of the species were weighted with more fish sampled for those species collected in greater volume.....that would leave almost half of the species withonly one or two individuals representing that species? One or two fish over a period of five years?

i'd suggest the prudent thing for you to do before you continue, then, is learn basic math

followed by basic grammar, and punctuation, lessons

:lol:

Which fish were left out of the 1996 and 1997 testings? Were they the least likely cyanide fish like mandarins and damsels ? And whAt happened to the 0ther 4100 fish in the testing data? there were 48,000 fish and only 7500 were include in the findings? No one else has a problem with this ? Ill remember this when MAC testing begins

 

[Anonymous]

kalk wrote:

All this for a cargo which has a value of about 30$ a box .

are you really a moron, or do you just play one on rdo?

:roll:

Still hurling insults instead of answers ......What do you disagree with ? One hundred damsels from PI cost 20 to thirty bucks 20cents to thirty cents per damsel FOB .......fifty clownfish at 75c .....about 38 bucks per box ........fifteen bi color angels at $2 bucks each is thirty bucks ......If I am moronic ......then you are definitely sophomoric because time and time I easily prove you have little true knowledge of this industry. What i say on this board is so shocking that most simply cannot fathom that what I say true .The truth in this business is so protected that finding the truth on you own is almost impossible . You had no idea that fish are that cheap ? And if Mary and Steve are not about to tell you the truth ........what else are they keeping from you ?

it wasn't an insult

kalk, i've been ordering/invoicing/pricing/picking (up at airport) fish as a retailer for close to 3 decades, on and off

how much do you pay for shipping?

how much does each fish represent in revenue?


one damsel dead costs...

the 'list' price of the damsel (your 0.75, whicj isn't it's actual cost)

freight/cites(if applicable, for a coral box) divided by the fish in the box.

your expenditures to recieve the fish into the store (time, gas, electricity, etc)


the loss of revenue to cover the purchase

the loss of revenue made on the purchase to utilize

































(it was an observation)

 

[Anonymous]

a damsel is worth at least $6 to me, in terms of it's actual monetary value, if lost


can you even afford to be so cavalier about the value of your own purchased goods from a monetary standpoint?



keep it up

that way, you'll go out of business quickly enough to really be of no further harm to anyone :wink:

 

[Anonymous]

Hy,
If you really listen to what Kalk has been saying, he won't be happy with any numbers. From what I gather, he wants 100% PI fish tested. Nothing less will do.

Kalk,
If you really are unhappy, why don't you sell your shop, move to Mindanao and make a difference.

And while I'm thinking about it, when did MAC ever have any fish to test?

 

[mkirda]

One or two fish over a period of five years?

How many do you want to see?
Do you want to see a minimum of 384 on a per species basis? i.e. 384,000 tested per year? (based on ~1000 MO fish species)

If this is your intent, what or how do you intend to fund such an endeavor?
Do you really want to spend those millions of dollars in such a fashion?

I posit that if IMA walked into a Packard Foundation grant for $10,000,000, and they set up 10 labs across the Philippines, then started doing sampling and testing in this volume, and came up with the same or similar results, Kalkbreath would still be here on RDO thrashing around like a fish out of water trying ANYTHING he could to throw doubt onto the results.

And Peter could publish the results saying that for year X, we got Z% with a 99% certainty and error bars of a mere 0.2%.

Does anyone else think it perfectly OBSCENE that Kalkbreath would advocate sacrificing 384,000 out of 3,000,000 fish? Or, to put it a better way, that we should kill 12.8% of the fish sold?

And here he makes me out to be an extremist... :roll:

While I would like to see data sets on individual species, I am more than aware of the costs involved- Genus level is good enough as far as I am concerned. And if we can identify certain species as being more cyanide targets, certainly those can be targetted for higher sampling rates. There has to be some balance between Kalkbreath's advocated extreme and the desire for better stats on individual species.

Regards.
Mike Kirda

 

[clarionreef]

Kalk,
Did you actually say that "we're not about to tell people the truth..." regarding something in the import of fish?
Geez, I've kinda felt tired of telling it actually.
Steve

 

[Anonymous]

Vitz, Kalk is talking export price, and your talking wholesale price. Two way different things. For once, your both right (on the price of the fish - freight bumps the actual landed price WAY up)

 

[Anonymous]

Vitz, Kalk is talking export price, and your talking wholesale price. Two way different things. For once, your both right (on the price of the fish - freight bumps the actual landed price WAY up)

kalk wrote:

All this for a cargo which has a value of about 30$ a box .

kalk recieves no such items :wink:

even then, if the exporter loses that box, it also costs them, in reality, quite abit more

 

[clarionreef]

Hey,
I just re-read the previous Calk post...
"..and if Steve and Mary are not about to tell you the truth... what else are they keeping from you?"
You mean besides the real story on Sasquatch, the grassy knoll and area 51?

[ For one, we've kept you in the dark about the difference between 'polls' as in exit polls and 'Poles', as in inhabitants of Eastern Europe. That was classic Calk, and everyone let it go...out of pity and exhasperation I suppose. ]



Sly, shy, secretively and always beating around the bush we are,
Steve
PS. Mary, don't let em ever find out the real story......er, whatever it is!

 

[Anonymous]

kal wrote:

All this for a cargo which has a value of about 30$ a box .

i'd like to make one more comment about this statement; it's almost profoundly revealing, especially given to whom it's attributed :wink:


part of the larger part of the problem w/this industry, and others, that get their source items as 'wild product', is that the majority of those who commerce, or trade, in these industries, relate to their harvest strictly in monetary terms, and only as it relates to their immediate pocket, without taking into consideration the efforts/impacts at the source of the 'product'



kalk doesn't see a damsel, he sees a pile of 3 quarters (though he should be seeing a $5 and a $1 bill, by his 'value' scale') :wink:


because he doesn't see the damsel, he can't, and doesn't, see everything that damsel's arrival to his door represents

nor is he really interested in doing so, as long as he can still realize his profit

 

[Anonymous]

Vitz, thats not my point, and you know it. Regardless if Kalk recieves such items, he was in fact refferring to export pricing, GEEZ.

And this from a guy who's gonna open a retail store for some one. I sure hope you don't treat the customers the way you treat the entire RDO community.

 

[Anonymous]

Vitz, thats not my point, and you know it. Regardless if Kalk recieves such items, he was in fact refferring to export pricing, GEEZ.

And this from a guy who's gonna open a retail store for some one. I sure hope you don't treat the customers the way you treat the entire RDO community.

wtf?

what the heck did i say now?

:?

i took what you meant as what i read, nothing more, or less.

how did i offend you?




p.s.
(i'm opening up a retail store for someone? that's news to me, even)