Did you know that royalty is getting in an uproar over fish?
Yep, it’s gotten that bad in the salmon world — the debate over “wild” versus
“organic” is getting fishy. It turns out that from the perspective of the Pure
Salmon Campaign (
www.puresalmon.org), there is no such thing as
certified-organic salmon. In late August 2009 at Aqua Nor, the biannual
international aquaculture trade show, the Pure Salmon Campaign called upon King
Harald of Norway to insist that Norwegian-owned companies operating salmon farms
in Canadian waters adopt strict environmental standards to protect British
Columbia’s wild salmon populations. Evidently Norway owns the two largest
marine harvest companies in the world, and the king is an avid fly-fisherman.
As of this writing, King Harald hasn’t gotten back to them. What’s going on?
The issue hit home the other night when I was ordering dinner
with a savvy young woman who happens to be my daughter. The glazed salmon was
the special. The server said it was “terrific.” Wild or farmed? “Farmed, but
it’s organic.” The young diner sniffed, said “oh” meaningfully, and took the
free-range chicken. This got me to thinking: is wild salmon that much better?
As with many things, the answer is more jumbled than forkful of
tuna fish salad. I checked with several sources, including Shawn Brisby, chef
at Tucson’s Canyon Ranch (a good example of a dining facility that takes clean
food seriously), and it turns out that they use organic farmed salmon imported
from Scotland and feel very good about it. So good that they gave two salmon
samples to a major food lab and asked the experts to run a comparison. The
verdict? The color was better in the wild salmon, but the wild fish had
virtually no omega-3 oils, the reason nutritionists tout salmon as a health food.
The wild salmon contained “only trace amounts of the good fats,” chef Brisby
says. On the other hand, the farmed salmon (which isn’t certified organic by
the USDA, but we’ll get to that next) had no PCBs, no mercury, and no other
contaminants or artificial colorings, and it was bursting with omega-3. Hmm. So
doesn’t that mean that aquaculture is working? And after all, wild salmon is
endangered, thanks to the huge demand worldwide (health-conscious American
diners chow down on imported salmon at the rate of more than 200,000 tons a
year). Shouldn’t aquaculture be the answer?
Not so fast, say the saints of the sea world — the folks behind
the Pure Salmon Campaign, a global coalition dedicated to protecting the oceans
from harm caused by salmon farming. There is no such thing as safe, clean
farmed salmon, regardless of whether it wears an organic label, they say. “U.S.
consumers find it shocking that fish treated with chemicals, as they do in
Europe, are considered ‘organic,’ ” says Andrea Kavanagh, manager of the Salmon
Aquaculture Reform Campaign at the Pew Environment Group, a member of the Pure
Salmon Campaign. “As far as I am concerned, organic fish is just regular farmed
fish sold a higher price. Full of chemicals.” What’s the biggest problem? “It’s
that salmon are carnivores, and to feed the farmed fish, you have feed them
foraged fish. And that effort is devastating the marine environment,” Kavanagh
says. “If they could fix the feeding issue, that would solve 80% of the
problem.” Sobering stuff. And here’s the other issue: farmed fish often break
loose from their nets or escape from their captive ocean ponds, breeding
willy-nilly with the wild fish, like rebels from the city fraternizing with the
up-country hicks. The mingled spawn then degrades the pure species.
The battle continues, and this foodie is still totally confused.
Like my young dining companion, I’m going for the chicken until someone can
give me a straight answer.
Louisa Kasdon can be reached at
louisa@louisakasdon.com.
