Wild salmon vs Farm-raised salmon
Hook, Line and Sinker
How do you like your salmon? Wild or domesticated?
Faced with the choice between wild salmon and farm-raised salmon, you might let your budget decide (farmed salmon costs quite a bit less than wild), or you might let nutrition and safety decide (wild salmon tends to have a higher omega-3 fatty acid content and fewer toxins).
Simple enough. One problem, though: That wild salmon you paid a premium price for just might have spent its entire life on a salmon farm.
Buyer beware
In several e-Alerts I’ve ranted about dubious nutrition and dietary supplement advice published in Consumer Reports magazine. But when CR editors and reporters stick to what they do best, then I’m a fan. And in the August 2006 issue they provide salmon customers with an eye-opening and valuable investigation.
Summer is salmon season, and that’s when CR shoppers started their investigation last year. Both farmed and wild salmon samples were purchased in stores located in several states. Each sample was then tested for synthetic food coloring, which is fed to farm-raised salmon to give the meat that familiar, pink salmon color. Without food coloring added, farmed salmon meat is gray, and customers won’t buy it. (The color of wild salmon meat develops naturally from crustaceans the fish eat.)
The verdict: All the samples (nearly 30) were correctly labeled.
But things changed dramatically in the off-season.
In November, December and March, CR investigators found that 10 out of 23 salmon samples labeled “wild” were actually farm-raised. And inexplicably, the phony wild salmon was generally priced higher than genuine wild salmon.
Fish gone wild
So other than getting bilked out of your grocery dollars, why would you prefer wild salmon to farm-raised?
The CR article cites a study I told you about in the e-Alert “Down on the Farm” (1/20/04), in which University of Indiana (UI) researchers collected two metric tons of wild and farm-raised salmon from seafood stores in North America, South America and Europe. The fish samples were examined for traces of cancer-causing toxins such as polychlorinated biphenols (PCBs), and dioxins. The UI team found “significantly higher” traces of dioxins in farm-raised salmon compared to wild. They also detected an average PCB content of 36 parts per billion (ppb) in farm salmon as opposed to 3 ppb in wild salmon.
In a follow up to that e-Alert, “Fish Out of Water” (2/25/04), several HSI members weighed in on the farming issue. A member named Gail wrote: “Farmed salmon are kept in large, overcrowded, netted pens overflowing with feces, antibiotics, artificial colorants and pesticides.”
And a member named Madeson added: “These penned up farmed Salmon breed so rapaciously while confined so closely together which necessitates the use of huge quantities of antibiotics and drugs to keep them healthy.”
Fishing tips
If you don’t want to give up your wild salmon, CR offers three tips for insuring you get the real deal.
- Enjoy the summer
As the CR test clearly shows, your chance of buying and actually getting wild salmon is much better during salmon season. - Avoid European salmon
CR reports that farm-raised salmon from the U.S., Canada and Chile is more likely to have lower dioxin and PCB levels than salmon raised in Europe. - Look for Alaska
Salmon farming is outlawed in Alaska, so your chances of getting true wild salmon is better if it’s caught in Alaskan waters. Nevertheless, CR shoppers did find some farm-raised “Alaska” salmon.
Sources:
“The Salmon Scam” Consumer Reports, August 2006, consumerreports.org
“Global Assessment of Organic Contaminants in Farmed Salmon” Science, Vol. 303, No. 5655, 1/9/04, sciencemag.com
