Malaysia Just Outlawed the Sale of the World's Deadliest Fish

It's hard to argue the merits of eating a pufferfish when any meal featuring the Japanese delicacy could be your last. The fish, known in Japan as fugu, contains lethal amounts of a poison called tetrodotoxin—a neurotoxin that's far deadlier than cyanide. When the fish is prepared by a trained chef, it's said to be perfectly safe. But when it's not. Well… you know…

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In Japan, where highly trained chefs have been preparing the dish for centuries, fugu poisoning still sends between 20 and 40 brave diners to the hospital every year, according to some estimates. So imagine the shock when an investigation in Malaysia found poorly prepared pufferfish for sale at wet markets in Penang, Kedah, and Perak under the name "crystal fish."

Fishmongers were selling rebranded pufferfish fillets to Malaysian restaurants and consumers as a low-cost alternative to pricier Spanish mackerel and grouper fillets, a report in The Star found. And no one was telling consumers that these fillets were actually from a deadly fish prepared by less-than-skilled hands.

"By turning to pufferfish fillet, hawkers and restaurant owners are able to reduce their costs by half," an anonymous source told the news site. "The housewives are not told that the fillet are made from pufferfish. Instead, fishmongers say it is a kind of edible fish, with some calling it 'crystal fish'."

One fish market in the coastal state of Penang told reporters that the pufferfish fillets were totally safe. They're delicious, he said, and, at least so far, no one had died. But still he knew better than to advertise the fillets as pufferfish.

"We dare not tell them it is from pufferfish," the fishmonger said. "People are skeptical of eating pufferfish as it is known to be poisonous. I have been selling this for the past few months, and nobody has gotten sick or died. Therefore, I think it's safe to eat."

Malaysia's Ministry of Health disagreed. The ministry announced plans on Monday to outlaw the sale of pufferfish unless it's first been prepared by "qualified persons," who are skilled enough to remove the poisonous parts without contaminating the entire fish. Those caught violating the law face up to two years in prison or 10,000 Malaysian ringgit ($2,326 USD) in fines.

But who exactly are these "qualified persons"? In Japan, there's an entire industry centered around the preparation of fugu. Sushi chefs who wish to sell the delicacy are required to apprentice under a senior chef and pass an exam first.

There's nothing like this in Malaysia. Instead, the pufferfish sold at Malaysian wet markets were often prepared by low-skilled foreign workers with little knowledge of the danger the fish posed to diners (or themselves).

"These laborers were told to just slice the tail portion of the pufferfish, below its abdomen, missing out the stomach," the source told The Star. "Gutting activities are carried out in makeshift huts and backyard operations near the ports where these fish were unloaded."

Death by tetrodotoxin has been described as "rapid and violent" by experts. It starts with a slight numbness of the mouth before turning into paralysis and inevitably death. And when it's bad there's really not all that much doctors can do. There's no known antidote to the pufferfish's toxins. In Japan, a little less than 7 percent of those poisoned by the fish die, on average.

In Malaysia… well, do you really want to take that risk?