Product of Portugal. Caught in the Northwest Pacific.

Everything precise on this tin was compelled.
Everything they chose to write tells you nothing.

The box announces itself as a design object and is right to. The illustration is credited to Mónica Correia, the text to Eugénio Roda, the recipes to Luís Baena, all by name, with a page in the site’s navigation called Illustrators. The company describes what it sells as quality linked with timeless design. Now read what it chose to tell you about the fish. “Tuna (61%).” Not albacore, not skipjack, no Latin name. The website widens that to the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, which is two thirds of the planet. The front reads PRODUCT OF PORTUGAL, and 100 Mistérios, Lda. sits at Rua do Progresso 145 in Perafita, in the middle of the Portuguese conservas industry. All of it is true. None of it tells you what is in the tin.

Turn the can over. FAO 61: Pacific, Northwest. The seas off Japan, Korea, Russia and China, roughly seven thousand miles from Perafita. An oval health mark, PT N 3531 CE, naming the facility that packed it in a code that resolves in a public EU register. A lot code wearing an L, because the law requires a flag in front of it. Best by 31.12.2030. A Proposition 65 cancer warning, applied as a sticker. Every precise thing on this tin is there because a regulation put it there, and none of it was proofread: the allergen line, the one the law compelled, says “fish allergy sufferes.” The copy they wanted is immaculate. The copy they owed has a typo.

Then you eat it. Tuna 61%, olive oil 21%, tomato pulp 15%, vinegar and white pepper 2%, salt 1%. That is not an ingredient list. It’s the recipe, in order, by weight, and it is the reason you will finish the tin standing at the counter. A regulation put it there. José wrote a page about their illustrators.

You are buying a fish you can’t look up. FAO 61 is an area, not an animal, and without a species there is no rating to check it against — the one thing on this tin the law didn’t compel. Portugal’s own tuna fishery is small, and the conservas industry has canned distant-water fish for a century, so José isn’t hiding anything the rest of the aisle isn’t. The rest of the aisle also isn’t asking you to admire the box.

Brand

José Gourmet

Produced & distributed by

100 Mistérios, Lda., Perafita, PT

Health mark

PT N 3531 CE

Catch area

FAO 61, Pacific Northwest

Species

not stated

Lot

072R2A

Best by

31.12.2030

Net weight

2.6 oz / 75 g

Contents

Tuna 61%, EVOO 21%, tomato pulp 15%, vinegar and white pepper 2%, salt 1%

Price

[fill]