Got Sushi?--Updated

Today's Chicago Tribune has an interesting story on the nation's sushi industry. Apparently, unbeknownst to most people, it's dominated by companies founded by and connected to the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

Adhering to a plan Moon spelled out more than three decades ago in a series of sermons, members of his movement managed to integrate virtually every facet of the highly competitive seafood industry. The Moon followers' seafood operation is driven by a commercial powerhouse, known as True World Group. It builds fleets of boats, runs dozens of distribution centers and, each day, supplies most of the nation's estimated 9,000 sushi restaurants.

Although few seafood lovers may consider they're indirectly supporting Moon's religious movement, they do just that when they eat a buttery slice of tuna or munch on a morsel of eel in many restaurants. True World is so ubiquitous that 14 of 17 prominent Chicago sushi restaurants surveyed by the Tribune said they were supplied by the company.

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"I have the entire system worked out, starting with boat building," Moon said in "The Way of Tuna," a speech given in 1980. "After we build the boats, we catch the fish and process them for the market, and then have a distribution network. This is not just on the drawing board; I have already done it."

In the same speech, he called himself "king of the ocean." It proved not to be an idle boast. The businesses now employ hundreds, including non-church members, from the frigid waters of the Alaskan coast to the iconic American fishing town of Gloucester, Mass.

The Trib says that, although the Unification Church and the sushi companies are theoretically separate, in reality their ties are quite close.

Moon's Unification Church is organized under a tax-exempt non-profit entity called The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. The businesses are controlled by a separate non-profit company called Unification Church International Inc., or UCI.

That company's connections to Moon's Unification Church go deeper than the shared name. A 1978 congressional investigation into Moon's businesses concluded: "It was unclear whether the UCI had any independent functions other than serving as a financial clearinghouse for various Moon organization subsidiaries and projects."

UCI as well as its subsidiaries and affiliates such as True World are run largely by church members, Schanker said. The companies were "founded by church members in line with Rev. Moon's vision," he said. "It's not coincidence."

Sometimes the links are more direct. The boatbuilding firm US Marine Corporation shares its headquarters offices with the church and lists the church as its majority shareholder, according to corporate records.

The article claims te company services hundreds of restaurants in Chicago, but you've got to buy a hard copy of the paper to see the list they provide of 14 that do and 3 that do not.

In a Trib blog, Eric Zorn comments on the story and is inundated with comments about whether trying to avoid restaurants that serve the UCI seafood is religious discrimination.

UPDATE--Zorn revisits the issue in a post early Thursday morning, examining some of the implications in voting with your pocketbook against this sushi or any other product whose parent company doesn't merit your approval.