Only when the last tree has died
and the last river has been poisoned
and the last fish has been caught
will we realize
we cannot eat money.
Cree Saying
Despite the best efforts of the friends the oceans and of wild salmon in particular, the public tends to forget, or ignore, the naked facts about salmon farming unless they are constantly reminded of them. I would suggest that this ‘out of sight, out of mind’ mentality is exactly what Big Aquaculture and its PR consultants count on. A seemingly insatiable appetite for this pink fleshed fish has had us on a roller coaster ride for several decades now with the steepest and scariest drops having occurred in the last half dozen years. Damien Gillis’ film Farmed Salmon Exposed, was posted online last week as part of the Pure Salmon Campaign's Global Week of Action, - yet another round of serious ‘in-your-face’ truth telling about farmed salmon, just as retail giant Target has pledged to stop selling ‘farmed salmon.’ This startling film reminded me of an episode of celebrity chef Eric Ripert’s Avec Eric that I saw online a few weeks earlier. This three Michelin Star chef is one of the masters of preparing fish, and he typically offers only wild fish in his restaurant. I was stunned that he was touting the “improved” flavor of ‘organic farmed salmon,’ in this episode on Star Ingredients. He was promoting a type of ‘industrial farming’ that still has serious unanswered ecological, economic, and health questions attached to it. It set me to wondering if any other ‘star’ chefs were offering farmed salmon on their menus along with free-range chickens.
It wasn’t long after I moved to Seattle and enjoyed my first wild salmon season that I realized those flavorless pink blocks being dished up in most places weren’t ‘real’ salmon. Then came 2004 and the results of the first significant scientific study on industrial pollutants in salmon in Science Magazine. Over two metric tons of farmed and wild salmon bought from wholesalers and retailers around the world were tested for industrial contaminants such as PCBs and dioxins. The 2.5 million dollar study revealed that farmed salmon contained far more contaminants than wild salmon - North Sea salmon was the most contaminated and Scottish salmon the worst of all. The article stated that “the study suggests that consumption of farmed salmon may result in exposure to a variety of persistent bioaccumulative contaminants with the potential for an elevation in attendant health risks.” It also concluded: “this study also demonstrates the importance of labeling salmon as farmed and identifying the country of origin.” Well, the industry didn’t take things lying down, and if you’ve been observant in restaurants over the years, you would have noticed that the words ‘farmed’ and ‘salmon’ don’t seem to show up together on very many menus anymore.
As you may know, the concentration of industrial pollutants is not the only problem that plagues salmon farming. The close confinement of salmon occurs in even larger numbers than with CAFOs on land, leading to problems of disease and over reliance on antibiotics. Many of these pens are located right in the midst of wild salmon runs, and they often have large numbers of juveniles and adults escape into the wild spreading parasites and diseases to wild salmon. Serious ecological damage occurs in the areas beneath and around the fish farms due to the all of the fish waste and uneaten food that falls to the bottom. This mess robs other species of food and oxygen and even creates dead zones. Since it takes three pound of feed to produce one pound of farmed salmon, these farms are creating serious economic problems as the seas are being systematically stripped of smaller fish such as anchovy, sardines, to produce feed - farmed salmon are processed at two years when they weigh 10 to 12 pounds, while wild salmon at that age are only about 6-inches long and weigh just ounces.
Aquaculture has been practiced for millennia, but never on this rapacious, industrial scale. The small farmers who operated in a less egregious manner and comprised this cottage industry in its early decades have been driven out or swallowed up by progressively larger players as the sector grew. Today, two Norwegian firms with a global reach dominate the industry with a number of small independents remaining. Many of these independents, and a number of the subsidiaries of the Big Two have attempted to re-brand themselves as ‘sustainable,’ ‘organic,’ or ‘natural.’
Organizations that certify the alleged ‘sustainable,’ or ‘organic’ practices of salmon farms turn a blind eye to the realities of farming salmon in coastal zones, and they leave consumers with the impression that these salmon are ‘farmed’ with the same restrictions as organic tomatoes, pigs, or lentils, and thus are safer and more healthful. Cutting the number of salmon in the pens down to only 30,000 doesn’t makes the pens more ‘natural’ for the salmon; they’re still feedlots - gee, now each salmon now gets a bathtub’s volume of water to swim in. While these operations don’t use synthetic compounds to color to make the flesh ‘pink,’ I wouldn’t call it ‘natural’ to feed a fish yeast for the same purpose. Massive amounts of waste still drop to the bottom, damaging the local ecosystems and there is still the question of the feed as a result these operations are far from ‘sustainable.’ Disease and parasites from industrial farms still spread into these ‘certified’ operations, requiring them to use of antibiotics and industrial disinfectants, which would disqualify them as ‘organic’ on land. To my knowledge, not one of these ‘certified’ farms has tested their salmon for pollutants to refute the 2004 study. Despite these ‘certifications,’ the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Oceana still recommend avoiding farmed salmon and the Marine Stewardship Council in Europe does not certify any farmed salmon.
Fortunately, there is no ‘organic’ certification for fish in this country or in Canada at this time. However, due to a loophole in our regulations, fish certified organic in another country is allowed to be sold here with the organic label, and that is what is happening - except in California. While all salmon farms are not created equal, they all do possess some or all of the problems cited above, to some degree or other, and this is the problem. It is bad enough not to identify that a salmon is farmed, but it is even more egregious to market it as “natural” or even “organic.”
After watching the Avec Eric episode again, I googled some startling contradictions in a number of other celebrity chefs, such as Charlie Trotter, Rick Tramonto, Michael Mina, Thomas Keller, and Charlie Palmer...
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