Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com has taken all rainbow trout products off its shelves, as discussions are heating up as whether rainbow trout can be labeled and sold domestically as salmon in China.
As of press time, the Global Times surfed the JD.com website and found that now there are only sellers of Denmark salmon caviar. There were no rainbow trout products.
JD.com's move follows Chinese fishery authorities' controversial decision to label rainbow trout as a kind of salmon.
On August 10, the China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Alliance rolled out a standard that lists rainbow trout as a type of salmon, news website ifeng.com reported.
But this new standard has raised market controversy, as well as criticism from some overseas media.
A report from the UK-based Telegraph, for example, said that the move to label rainbow trout as salmon is "questionable" and "arbitrary," while the Guardian called the new standard "very fishy."
Domestic media reports earlier revealed that rainbow trout have for years been sold as similar-looking salmon in China.
JD.com didn't reply to an interview request as of press time.
The Global Times found that rainbow trout products are still sold on some other e-commerce websites. For example, an online shop called Dongjiang River Gourmet Shop was selling "Dongjiang River cold fresh water salmon (rainbow trout)" on tmall.com on Thursday.
A customer service representative at the shop said that rainbow trout is not ocean salmon. It is "cold fresh water salmon," he told the Global Times.
Another shop was selling a product called "fresh rainbow trout-fresh water salmon sashimi" on tmall.com, but the shop's customer representative denied that rainbow trout is salmon when contacted by the Global Times on Thursday.
Han Liang, founder of marketing firm Hexiaocehua Co, said that customers actually don't care very much about whether rainbow trout is salmon, but they are dissatisfied with the fact that they are not given enough information about the food products they buy.
"I think in the future any food's production place should be clearly indicated on its packaging," he said.
