IRRATIONAL preferences for caviar from rarer species are likely to drive the few remaining caviar sturgeon in the Caspian Sea to extinction.
Franck Courchamp and Agnès Gault of the University of Paris-South in Orsay ran taste tests at luxury receptions, where people were used to eating caviar, and among naive consumers at supermarkets. Tasters were presented with samples said to be from a “rare” and a “common” species – although both actually came from farmed sturgeon.
Even before tasting, 57 per cent of people at the luxury receptions expressed a preference for the “rare” caviar, while none preferred the “common”…
