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The Wild Salmon Debate
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A fresh look at farmed vs. wild.
By David Dobbs EatingWell March/April 2008
Healthy Salmon Recipes & Articles
About 10 years ago my friend Charles Johnson, the Vermont state naturalist, called me with a question about salmon. I was surprised and flattered to have Charles ask me about anything natural, for Charles holds an encyclopedic knowledge about the natural world and a deep but nonpedantic environmental ethic. Usually I call him. When I was writing a book about New England’s forests, I called Charles, and he made bog ecology, which is as complicated as calculus, seem as plain as pancakes. And when a woman I’d fallen in love with told me she had always wanted to see moose, I called Charles and asked him where to find moose. “Victory Bog,” he said. At Victory Bog my love and I found moose, and three years later we married.
Now Charles was calling me. “Got a question,” he said. “We’ve got some people over for dinner”—from the background came a rowdy banter—“and we were having this discussion. We’re wondering is it OK to eat salmon?”
This explained the call. As Charles knew, I am an avid salmon angler, and I had just written a book called The Great Gulf, about decimated ocean fisheries, and several articles about salmon. This made me a sort of salmon-expert-for-the-day. Charles, meanwhile, was as confused as most eco-conscious people are about the shifting fates and statuses of the world’s saltwater fish.
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Healthy Salmon Recipes
Grilled Salmon Soft Tacos
New World Gravlax
Plank-Grilled Sweet Soy Salmon
Salmon Burgers with Green Goddess Sauce
Southeast Asian-Inspired Salmon Soup
Healthy Salmon Recipe Collection
More Salmon Articles
Green Choices: Seafood Buyer’s Guide
Farm-Raised Salmon Goes Vegetarian
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| USER COMMENTS — Add Your Comment |
Very informative, well written article, I'm going wild !!
Mickey Macrils, Kennebunk, ME |
What about those farm raised salmon that come from farms that claim to be environmentally sustainable? I am thinking of those farms which are certified by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)? I have kids and have been buying fish that have been raised eating vegetarian diets (to minimize mercury levels) and are produced by farms which are certified by the Marine Stewardship Council. I thought that this would get around two problems that I consider: 1) mercury levels in fish and 2) environmental impact. Am I wrong? Is wild still better on those two dimensions?
Anonymous, Cleveland, OH |
Very good article. Learned something else in a report by a Canadian scientist some time back - Norwegian-farmed salmon (in Norway) are safe as the gov't there inspects regularly, and if they find one (1) louse per two (2) fish, the farm is shut down. Unfortunately, Norwegian co.'s farm all over the world, and no other gov't regulates similarly...so If a restaurant tells me it's Norwegian-farmed on the menu, I have to ask "farmed IN Norway?" So far, only one restaurant has been able to tell me. I regularly hand out "good fish/bad fish' directories in my local stores & have discouraged some would-be buyers of the farmed product. More needs to be done, by gov't regulation. The strange thing is, frozen wild salmon (king and sockeye) are available here year 'round, and at lower prices than the farmed! They lose nothing in taste and texture when frozen. Thanks, & I hope you will follow up with more on this "debate".
Thomas Tizard, Kailua, HI |
Very informative BUT when looking at the fish farms, you only consider salmon as food for humans. These fish are an important part of the food chain for other living creatures.
Audrey Naese, Carmel, ME |
Mr. Dobbs,
I would like to first thank you for bringing to the forefront the issues that surround this topic. However, I feel that you overlooked mentioning the large amounts of antibiotics and other drugs that are given to farm raised fish in their food to prevent disease outbreaks. What are the long term effect of these things? Also I feel that you completely overlooked the work being done in Alaska by the non-profit aquaculture associations. These groups have been working out the intricacies of "fish ranching" for more that 30 years. I also feel that you have failed to place credit where credit is due. The main reason that Alaskan salmon are doing so well is not because of good management by our state organization, but by the hundreds of millions of juvenile salmon that are released from these hatcheries annually. I would encourage any interested person to do some research into Alaskan hatcheries to see what we have been doing to overcome the problem that affect "farm raised" salmon. All in all, the article was fair, but you forgot about Alaska like everyone else!
Andrew Walter, Homer, Ak |
Thank you for a well written article. In response to the comment from Anonymous in Cleveland, the MSC does not certify aquaculture operations (yet). They must be certified by someone else, and there are some serious shortfalls with some of the certifying bodies that currently exist. WWF is hosting aquaculture dialogues that are bringing together people from industry and NGOs to develop eco-certification standards that will then be handed to a third party (like the MSC) to do the audits and certifications. The other comment that I would like to make is that all to often we expect things to be cheap, not realizing the true cost of our consumption. Government subsidies are a huge problem for wild fisheries and makes it seem like fish is much cheaper than it actually is. As a global society, only paying the total cost of a product, no matter what it is, will lead to conservation of our natural resources for future generations. Europe in general is much further ahead of the US on this. Hopefully we will evolve rapidly.
Eric, Takoma Park, MD |
Mark Twain once said, “I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one instead." This was way too long for the point he was trying to make. I am a freelance writer and know the value of getting to the point quickly. What was with all that Charles Johnson stuff?
Spicy Brice, Littleton, CO |
Eric (from Takoma Park) THANK YOU for answering my question! The store that I go to offers "semi-vegetarian" raised salmon (where sardines are only used sparingly because of their high mercury levels) which are certified by the MSC. However, they also have farm-raised salmon from Norway. If I understand Thomas Tizard's comments correctly, then this fish might be a reasonable alternative. Again, my main concerns are 1) high mercury levels in wild salmon and 2) the environmental impact of fisheries. If I had to infer, the Norwegian farm raised fish seem to score well on environmental impact but not on mercury levels. So it looks like I have to pick between lower mercury levels (in farm raised "vegetarian" salmon) and environmental sustainability (by buying wild salmon). Is that how most people see the trade-off?
Anonymous, in Cleveland, Oh |
What about the ridiculously high PCB content found in farmed salmon? PCB content needs to come down 90% to compete with Alaskan Wild Salmon. Everyone here needs to get their facts straight!
www.ewg.org
EWG.org, Everywhere, CA |
My family much prefers the taste and texture of farmed salmon. We buy it at our local Albertson's for a little as $4.00 per pound and Keta Salmon goes for $1.99 so we feast on Keta a lot. All the wild fishing has been shut down anyway so it is a good thing we love the farmed and a lot of canned tuna. Hey! Once you smother it in Tartar sauce, who cares.
Thanks.
lorelei, Altadena, CA |
I'm wondering when exactly this article was written. It implies that there are abundant amounts of wild Pacific salmon but only a few weeks ago it was announced that most of the salmon fishing along California and Oregon have been shut down this year due to the rapidly decreasing numbers, with Washington severely restricting the fishing.
Danno, Los Angeles, CA |
Why don't you just give us the information we need on the first page. I didn't like having to go through the stories of your friends, dinner parties, and word for word conversations. After 3 pages, I didn't care about salmon anymore!
Janice, Wilmington, NC |
Informative but, (yawn, yawn) much too lengthy.
Sherry Richardson, Albuquerque, NM |
Farm raised salmon is nothing less than processed food. I'm sorry to hear Lorelei prefers her family to have PCB for dinner. Smother it with Tarter sauce? Talk about using half your brain. Wake up!
Carla, Glendora, CA |
Excellent article! Thank you so much for the information. I'm definitely going to change my salmon eating habits!! From now on I will be keeping an eye only for sustainable fisheries and fish farms.
Natalia Campbell, Raleigh, NC |
I appreciate your article and have been watching this debate carefully for a few years now. I think you paint a very REALISTIC picture of the future of wild salmon, unfortunately for us.
Denise, Johnson City, TN |
Thanks for this excellent article which 'gets it' better than most. For more info on wild versus farmed salmon visit vitalchoice.com
Randy, Bellingham, WA |
Thank you for the article which I fouud very informative. One area I would like more information on is the differences between regular atlantic (farmed) salmon and Organic farmed salmon. I didn't mind the dinner party talk... keep in mind this is a magazine article.
Alan Mart, Westport, CT |
This article doesn't mention that the pellets used to feed the farmed fish are made of other fish species and that it takes more than a pound of pellets to raise a pound of fish.
Kit, Seattle, WA |
I'm happy to see so many "sheep" out there, doing what the enviro-nuts and eco-nuts want them to do. That means more FRESH, TASTY WILD SALMON for the rest of us! At least wild Pacific salmon doesn't need "food coloring" to make it look appetizing! If you have never eaten wild Pacific salmon, you're missing out! There is NO comparison in taste. So keep eating your pale, fishy-tasting, mushy, farmed salmon. We'll keep catching and eating the REAL salmon. P.S.-This guy says he's a writer? Where did he get his literary degree? This was the most boring article I have read in years. "Just the facts, Ma'am."
Sparky, Juneau, AK |
This was a nicely written article with both human elements and scientific information contained in it. Thank you. I hope further updates are made available as some of these measures mentioned by other commentators are implemented. And for those wishing not to tax their brains overmuch with articles such as this or who have restrictions on your reading time, please kindly watch the nightly news or pick up the printed newspaper for those sound bites and printed blurbs which use simple words and which won't take up too much of your time and brain power.
Julie, Knoxville, TN |
My scientific speciality is creating systems for largescale production of algae. One of the applications for which I grow algae is to supplement commercial fish feed--the kind that goes to feed farmed salmon. Right now, the people who manufacture these commercial feeds do not buy algae for addition to their formula. So what? Fish do not produce omega-3 fatty acids. They are taken into the fish by the fish ingesting algae, or krill, which eats algae. Farm raised fish do not have access to these sources of omega-3's. Get it? Eat farm-raised salmon and it does not contain omega-3's. So--you get no omeag-3's. Don't take my word for it. Go online and find out. Those fish feed manufacturers have proudly announced for a few years that, because fish meal and fish oil is so expensive, they have replaced it with soy and other vegetable oils and meal. But, no algae. No algae, no EPA or DHA. Sorry, but you need to know.
Ari, Albuquerque, NM |
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