Facts: Caviar
Caviar is a food consisting of salted, often pasteurized fish roe from species in the sturgeon family (Acipenseridae). Sometimes the rum is smoked.
Traditionally, the term caviar is used only for rum from wild sturgeon from the Caspian and Black Seas, but as the wild sturgeon population has declined sharply, rum from farmed sturgeon has taken over the market.
The word caviar comes from the Persian word for “having sturgeon”. Traditionally, Russian and Iranian caviar from the Caspian Sea region has been the most highly valued.
The caviar has made certain specific sturgeon species the world’s most valuable fish per kilogram. Due to the slow reproduction of the species, and the fact that they reach sexual maturity late, they are extra vulnerable to exploitation and other threats such as overfishing, environmental toxins and reduced habitat. Most sturgeons are today classified as critically endangered, which makes the group one of the world’s most endangered animal groups.
“For most people, caviar means Russia, but that hasn’t been the case for a long time now,” says caviar seller Agata Lakomiak-Winnicka.
At the Ruś fish farm in northern Poland, thousands of sturgeons – some over a meter long – swim around in channels fed by the crystal clear water of a nearby river. The precious rum is harvested after the fish have reached sexual maturity and is then washed, salted and packaged.
Last year, Lakomiak-Winnicka’s company Antonius Caviar produced 42 tons of the black delicacy. Most of it is exported to the United States, the United Arab Emirates, France and Denmark.
Do not want to buy Russian goods
The big challenge for caviar producers worldwide is the “myth of Russian caviar”, according to Lakomiak-Winnicka. But most of today’s caviar is produced on fish farms and has nothing to do with Russia at all.
— Take any package of caviar labeled as “Russian tradition” or “Russian method” and you’ll see that 99 percent of the time it doesn’t even come from Russia, she says.
Sturgeons swim in an aquarium in Tulcea, Romania in 2011.
With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many consumers do not want to buy goods associated with Russia, says Wiktoria Yerystova-Rostkowska, who owns a Russian grocery store outside Warsaw.
— Because of the war, customers ask where the caviar comes from. They want good caviar, but it must not be Russian, she says, adding that the caviar she sells comes from Germany.
Overfishing and exploitation
According to tradition, caviar is made from the rum from wild sturgeons that live in the Caspian and Black seas. The most well-known producers have previously been the Russian and Iranian ones. But years of exploitation, overfishing and environmental toxins have brought the sturgeon to the brink of extinction and several of the species are now protected under international conventions.
The EU and US have banned Russian caviar as part of sanctions against Moscow, but it was already virtually impossible to obtain due to efforts to protect the wild sturgeon.
The world’s caviar producers see the boycott of the Russian goods as a chance to finally make the outside world understand that most of today’s caviar does not come from Russia.
“Proudly produced in Poland”, it says on the small jars of Antonius Caviar.