Knowing the Source of Your Food
There is a new trend in knowing the story behind your food that we hope doesn’t fade out. Over centuries, the gap between farm and plate has widened for Americans. We shop the aisles of our grocery stores and know nothing about who grows or raises the food that we consume. How do they treat the animals, the crops, the environment? What are they putting into this food that we then absorb into our bodies? We have become so disconnected that some children may not even realize the milk they drink comes from a cow.
Thankfully recent food movements and trends are pushing to bridge this gap. It is important for us to know the answers to all those questions, so we can make educated decisions about what we eat based on what is important to us. Someone may be concerned about GMOs and growth hormones, while someone else is dedicated to helping our environment, or both.
At Tsar Nicoulai, we are passionate about keeping the food we produce clean and healthy and using practices that don’t harm our environment. Our sturgeon live in tanks that mimic their natural habitat. They are fed non-GMO feed and are never given growth hormones, so you can be confident in the quality of the fish. A sturgeon will be on the farm upwards of eight years, requiring much dedication from our farmers and team to make sure that the fish are healthy and happy under the California sun. Our farmers have even been known to sing to our fish. You might think that doesn't affect the outcome of our caviar, but we would challenge you to prove it doesn't ;-).
We recently implemented an aquaponics system to grow lettuce. The natural waste from the fish tanks flows down to our floating lettuce plants. The lettuce takes the rich nutrients from the water, cleans it and sends it back to the fish tanks. It is an incredibly sustainable, closed system that produces great caviar, and great lettuce, not to mention how much better it is for our environment. This is what we believe we should be supporting and the types of food that we should be consuming.
As a company, Tsar Nicoulai is completely hands on. We control every part of the process in every product we make. We check and control the quality of our caviar ourselves. Because of this we can also be 100% confident in the safety practices used in all aspects of our business. We have nothing to hide and are always happy to discuss our production with our customers.
Do we want to support a company that doesn't take pride in their product or their employees? What would that say about the product itself?
We want to take a moment this Labor Day to recognize our employees, farmers and partners at Tsar Nicoulai Caviar. It is because of all of them that we can be proud of the caviar, roe, smoked goods and lettuce that we produce. We love to share the passion of our team with our customers as it is important to us that they know where their seafood comes from and just how great it is!
