Sushi eaters could face sticker shock the next time they order a California roll or check the box for another round of yellowtail nigiri. 
 
 Thanks to the historic drought in California, prices may spike for the specialty rice used in the popular Japanese dish. Production of the rice, which is grown primarily in the Golden State, is expected to drop by 25 percent this year. 
 
 Text Size - 
 
 + 
 
 reset 
 
 California — and the Sacramento Valley in particular — is the nation’s primary source for the high-quality short- and medium-grain rice used in sushi and is a major supplier of the rice for other countries, too. But the state’s 2,500 rice growers this year planted just 420,000 acres, about a quarter fewer than usual, because farmers weren’t allowed to use water for more, according to the California Rice Commission. 
 
 California farmers are beholden to a patchwork of local, state and federal water sources that distribute their annual water supply. More and more farmers are getting less or even no water allocations as the drought drags through its third year. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Drought, disease and bacon cheeseburgers) 
 
 “The biggest challenge is simply not enough rain and snowfall for multiple years, coupled with all of the demand from the most urban and top [farming] state in the U.S.,” California Rice Commission spokesman Jim Morris said. “Being in charge of the water allocations is a tough job right now: precious little water and many areas of need in our state.” 
 
 The drought has taken its toll on the vast majority of farmers in the country’s largest agriculture state. About a half-million acres that would normally be producing fruits and vegetables this year won’t be planted, according to the California Farm Bureau Federation. 
 
 A huge chunk of the state, including its largest produce regions, continues to experience what government meteorologists consider “exceptional drought” conditions — the worst possible category that can be assigned by the USDA’s National Drought Mitigation Center. Most of the rest of the state is considered to be in either “extreme drought” or “severe drought.” 
 
 Congressional staffers are reportedly working behind the scenes to reach a compromise on House and Senate bills aimed at providing relief from California’s drought. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Climate change isn’t for the birds) 
 
 But any changes will be too late to affect the 2014 rice market. As the harvest is set to finish in October, production could be down by more than a billion pounds, Morris said. 
 
 Growers in the Yuba City-based California Rice Marketers cooperative — a group of six rice farms that normally plant on 2,000 acres — may not feel too much pain. They planted less this year but hope to see their prices go up from the roughly $20 per hundredweight they received in 2013 to as much as $24, General Manager Kevin Keeley said. 
 
 And California Heritage Mills, a Colusa County rice mill owned by 15 farmers, can expect something of a windfall. The three-year old co-op planted all its acres this year and also hopes to get a better price, said Guy Gomes, the company’s sales and marketing director. 
 
 The real pain will be felt at sushi restaurants. They will continue to serve their usual fare of spicy tuna rolls, California rolls and yellowtail rolls, but soon they’ll have to make a decision about whether to pass on the expected added cost of their product or see a reduction in profit margins, said California Restaurant Association spokeswoman Angie Pappas. 
 
 Nobody knows yet how much those costs, and the price of rice for consumers in general, will rise. 
 
 (Also on POLITICO: Jerry Brown: Fires related to climate change) 
 
 “There’s only a harvest once a year and the majority of [sushi rice] comes from California,” Pappas said. “Everyone’s still in a wait-and-see mode to see how much the prices go up, but then you’re going to definitely see some price-tweaking.” 
 
 Daniel Sumner, director of the University of California’s Agricultural Issues Center, said that so far he expects only small price increases on Japanese restaurant menus. 
 
 Overall, the sharp reduction in California rice planting “is going to show up in higher prices,” he said. “There’s no question about it.” 
 
 Hissho Sushi, a Charlotte, N.C., company that trains chefs for sushi bars throughout the U.S., is bracing for the higher prices, too. 
 
 Spokeswoman Andrea Lee said the company’s California supplier “is already factoring in price increases due to the drought situation during the past several months. … It’s a huge challenge to anticipate and plan ahead for the unforeseen. Over 50 percent of our sushi rice is directly impacted by this drought, as are the ensuing price changes and supply.” 
 
 While California rice may be in short supply, rice growers in other parts of the country are expecting a bumper crop. In fact, overall rice production in the U.S. is expected to increase by as much as 21 percent this year, according to the latest Department of Agriculture forecast. 
 
 Farmers in Arkansas, Louisiana and elsewhere in the South have historically grown long-grain rice, but these states have begun ramping up production of medium-grain in recent years. 
 
 However, sushi chefs are prejudiced in favor of the California variety, said Morris. Farmers there grow special varieties of Japonica rice that make the state the only source for Japanese importers, he said. It’s perceived as tasting better and having a better mouth feel. 
 
 There are certainly some export customers that may be willing to take Southern medium-grain rice in lieu of the California product, said Chuck Wilson, director of the University of Arkansas’ Rice Research and Extension Center, but he doubts sushi restaurants in the U.S. are ready to make the switch. 
 
 And that’s what has rice grower Keeley most concerned. 
 
 “What I’m worried about is: How high does the price go, and does that start driving demand away? If the price gets too high, does the end user start going to substitute products or maybe an inferior rice?” ||||| Last Friday, a week after announcing they were investigating an ongoing multistate Salmonella outbreak linked to sushi, federal public health officials were able to pinpoint the likely source of the bacteria that has now sickened at least 141 people. The suspect? Something called Nakaochi Scrape distributed by Moon Marine Corporation USA. 
 
 Nakaochi Scrape, as described by the Food and Drug Administration, is “tuna backmeat, which is specifically scraped off the bones, and looks like a ground product.” 
 
 This description has prompted several media outlets to compare scraped tuna with the controversial lean finely textured beef (LFTB) – also known as “pink slime” – that has captured headlines recently. 
 
 So what is Nakaochi Scrape? Is it indeed the fish version of LFTB (a.k.a., “Pink Slime”), which is produced by taking leftover scraps from a beef carcass, separating the meat from the fat, sinews and gristle in a heated centrifuge, grinding the meat and then treating it with ammonia? While both products are separated from bones, the similarities seem to end there. 
 
 Tuna scrape is the part of the fish that remains after the filets have been removed as whole cuts. Once a knife has been run down both sides of the spine to cut off the filets, meat close to the bone missed by the blade is then scraped out with a spoon-like device. After being collected in this way, it is sometimes chopped into smaller bits but no more processing is done. 
 
 “I don’t think it’s a fair comparison at all,” says Ken Gall, Extension Associate at Cornell University and member of the National Seafood HACCP Alliance Steering Committee, referring to the comparison between tuna scrape and LFTB. “[LFTB] is a product that’s treated, and treated in a way to sterilize it, which is going to coagulate protein and be a whole different process.” 
 
 Tuna Scrape in the Food Supply 
 
 However, fish scrape is not a commonly recognized food. Indeed no sushi vendor offers “spicy tuna scraped from fish backbone roll.” So where is scraped fish meat in our food supply? 
 
 Raw fish scrape is served in many Japanese dishes, sometimes over rice, sometimes in sushi rolls and sometimes on its own. 
 
 Some scrape is served fresh at restaurants, where chefs may remove the backbone meat themselves. 
 
 Just because it’s not part of the filet doesn’t mean back scrape is an inherently “worse” part of the fish, says Harry Yoshimura, owner of Mutual Fish Company, Inc., a well-known and respected Seattle-based seafood market. 
 
 “Usually meat around the bone tastes very, very good,” he says. “And when you get a good fish, it’s really terrific.” 
 
 The quality of tuna scrape, says Yoshimura, depends on the fish it came from and how it was prepared. 
 
 Moon Marine’s Nakaoshi Scrape was imported from India, where it was processed and frozen before shipping. 
 
 Frozen imported fish products are usually sold at cheaper prices than domestic fresh fish, says Yoshimura, a sign that they probably — although not necessarily — come from a lower-grade fish. 
 
 FDA was not able to supply Food Safety News with data on how much tuna scrape is imported into the U.S. each year. The agency also reported in an e-mailed statement that it “does not have data on the frequency of use of this product in sushi.” 
 
 Fish Scrape and Food Safety 
 
 What about the safety of scraped fish product? Is raw tuna scrape known as a particularly risky food? 
 
 “The more contact (a food has) with the environment — and this is true with ground beef or turkey or chicken, too — if there is surface contamination it is going to be spread throughout the product, so then rather than having an isolated contaminated spot you just mixed it up into the whole unit,” explains Gall. 
 
 Tuna scrape is “first and foremost, a ready-to-eat product that is raw and not going to be cooked before it’s consumed, so that automatically puts it in a higher risk category,” he adds. 
 
 Seafood sold in the United States must be processed according to Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) plans, under which processors identify possible contamination points and then take proper sanitation measures at each of those steps. 
 
 Gall, who created and manages the National Seafood HACCP Internet training course, says foreign seafood suppliers are also required to have a HACCP system in place before they can sell their products to the U.S. 
 
 Because the United States imports 80 percent of the seafood eaten domestically and only 1 percent of that food is inspected by FDA, a large part of the seafood safety system relies on adherence to HACCP plans and on importers testing to ensure that incoming product is not contaminated. 
 
 But while the government’s investigation is ongoing in the multistate Salmonella outbreak linked to tuna scrape, says Gall, it’s “anyone’s guess” as to where the safety system broke down in this case. 
 
 One possibility is that the contamination likely happened before the scrape was shipped and came from an environmental source such as contaminated water or an employee carrying the bacteria. 
 
 Yoshimura points out that it is harder to verify the quality of seafood processed abroad. “With some of this imported stuff, you don’t know what condition the fish was in or what condition they’re scraping the meat in,” he notes. 
 
 Whether Moon Marine Corporation tested the product once it arrived in the U.S. has not been disclosed. 
 
 “If it was known that the company was going to be selling to sushi restaurants and/or grocery stores knowing that it’s a higher-risk product, you would expect more testing to occur,” says Gall. 
 
 Raw Tuna Outbreak – Not The First Time 
 
 While tuna scrape doesn’t come to mind as a typical source of a foodborne illness in the U.S., it is not raw tuna’s first go-around with food poisoning. 
 
 In October of 2007, consumption of previously frozen raw ahi tuna was linked to a multistate outbreak of Salmonella Paratyphi B that sickened 44 people. The tuna was imported from Indonesia and distributed by a company in the U.S. 
 
 In 2010, frozen raw ahi tuna was again linked to an outbreak of Salmonella Paratyphi B, which sickened 23. That product was thought to have originated in Asia. 
 
 In October of last year, Osamu Corp. of Gardena, CA recalled hundreds of cases of frozen ground tuna after federal inspectors found decomposition in several samples and elevated histamine levels in the fish collected from one retail location. The toxin sickened 3 people, all of whom had purchased sushi at the same location. 
 
 Gall speculates that this latest, larger outbreak linked to sushi may serve as a warning to the sushi industry to adhere to safety protocols and strengthen verification procedures. 
 
 “It may be a wake-up call that you’ve got to pay the same attention [to sushi products] as you always have to raw material,” he says. 
 
 Yoshimura cautions that while tuna scrape is now gaining some notoriety, it does not have a huge market presence. 
 
 “With one situation like (the outbreak), you could blow the whole thing out of proportion when there isn’t that much of the stuff available,” he notes. 
 
 According to Yoshimura, the lesson here is to know where your product comes from and how it was made. 
 
 For more information about the ongoing Salmonella Bareilly outbreak and recalled product, click here.
– Extreme drought conditions in California have caused residents to face government fines, paint their lawns, and stress about their beloved giant sequoias. Now the whole country might be joining in the state's water woes: Production of the special rice used in sushi, grown mainly in California, is set to decline by 25% in 2014 because farmers were limited to how many acres they could adequately water, Politico reports. Translation for the rest of us—sushi restaurants are going to have to decide whether to take the financial hit themselves or ask customers to pay higher prices for their tempura, tuna, and Tijuana rolls, according to a California Restaurant Association spokeswoman. Most of the state is high and dry, categorized as being in "exceptional," "extreme," or "severe" drought conditions, the United States Drought Monitor indicates. A California Rice Commission spokesman says rice production could be down by more than a billion pounds, as per Politico, affecting restaurants and even schools that train sushi chefs. Rice is thriving in other parts of the country—overall rice production will be up 21% this year, according to AGWeb.com—but chefs are partial to the short-grain Japonica rice typically used in sushi dishes. Still, one general manager of a California rice co-operative worries, via Politico: "If the price gets too high, does the end user start going to substitute products or maybe an inferior rice?"