NYT,pg1: Stores Say Wild Salmon, but Tests Say Farm Bred

[DeepModem Mom]

Stores Say Wild Salmon, but Tests Say Farm Bred
By MARIAN BURROS

Published: April 10, 2005


Fresh wild salmon from West Coast waters used to have a low profile in New York: it generally migrated eastward in cans. But a growing concern about the safety of farm-raised fish has given fresh wild salmon cachet. It has become the darling of chefs, who praise its texture and flavor as superior to the fatty, neutral-tasting farmed variety, and many shoppers are willing to pay far more for it than for farmed salmon.

Today, "fresh wild salmon" is abundant, even in the winter when little of it is caught. In fact, it seems a little too abundant to be true.

Tests performed for The New York Times in March on salmon sold as wild by eight New York City stores, going for as much as $29 a pound, showed that the fish at six of the eight were farm raised. Farmed salmon, available year round, sells for $5 to $12 a pound in the city....

***

The findings mirror suspicions of many in the seafood business that wild salmon could not be so available from November to March, the off-season. Wild and farmed salmon fillets and steaks look similar because farmed fish are fed artificial coloring that makes them pink, but that coloring can be measured in laboratory testing.

With East Coast wild salmon all but extinct and West Coast wild catches restricted by quotas, farmed fish constitute 90 percent of this country's salmon sales....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/dining/10salmon.html

[Maple]

1. My favorite excuse

"At M. Slavin & Sons in Brooklyn, the store manager, Phil Cohen, said: "Our salmon is from Canada. All wild salmon in Canada is farm raised."

This will be big news to the salmon fishermen here. :D

[oscar111]

2. Regulation by gov is the answer

we have not the power to go inspect all sources of food. Nor inspect factories making shoddy appliances and pills.

GOP, hang your head in shame.

[radfringe]

7. maybe they escaped from the farms

and were caught in the wild -- then technically it could be spun that they are wild....

[truthisfreedom]

3. nothing to see here. pink food coloring is good for you! go back to your

cubicles and cringe as you contemplate the alternative minimum tax. fish is fish. farming is the American way. wild salmon is dangerous! they can bite!

[lebkuchen]

4. corn syrup is also very unhealthy

lots of lawsuits taking place over that genetically modified sweetener, and nearly everything processed in the US contains it because it's so cheap.

Not in Germany, though. That country's labels usually say "raw sugar" or "cane sugar."

[Karenina]

5. It is a little better here

but no one is immune to these deceptions. There was a bio-eier scandal a few years back where the number of organic eggs sold eclipsed the number produced by 65%... It's EVERYWHERE. Poisoned air, water and food... Anything goes when it comes to padding the bottom line. :SIGH:

[lebkuchen]

8. I see "bio" all the time at Tegut

I buy whatever vegetable/fruit looks the best, don't pay much attention to bio. But if you here of anything on the German market that I shouldn't be eating, PM me!

Danke! :)

[DiverDave]

6. Another assault on the environment

The bush administration wants to classify farm raised salmon as genetically the same as wild salmon.
By doing this it clears the way for the wild coho salmon to be removed from the endangered species list and allows ranchers and timber company's to ignore the damage done to stream beds where the wild fish lay their eggs.
1984 folks, black is white...
In NO WAY is a farm raised fish the same as a wild one.

[pinniped]

9. Don't buy farmed salmon crap.

Destroying the habitat for 'wild salmon' is among one of their traits.

[chlamor]

10. Factory Fish Farming= PCB's - Algaecides- Pesticides

MATTERS OF SCALE: FACTORY FISH FARMING

Number of different algaecides, herbicides, pesticides, and other chemical additives normally fed to farm-raised salmon in 1989: 3

Number being used in 2000: 26

Time it takes, in a catfish pond producing 5,000 kilograms of fish per year, to drop 10 tons of waste into the water: 1 year

Average period of time a pond is used in raising catfish for human consumption, before draining and refilling with fresh water: 6 years

PCB concentrations found in wild salmon, in a recent study, in pg/g: 5,302

PCB concentrations found in farmed salmon : 51,216

Percentage of global production of fish and seafood coming from aquaculture in 1970: 3.9

Percentage coming from aquaculture in 2000: 27.3

Estimated amount of beef produced, worldwide, in 2002, in metric tons: 49,700,000

Estimated amount of farmed fish produced in 2002: 52,700,000

http://www.worldwatch.org/press/news/2003/08/18/

[megatherium]

11. How much of the "organic, non-GM" products we buy aren't, really?

One of the apparently farm-raised salmon was purchased at Whole Foods, although it might have been an escapee from a fish farm (it had somewhat less of the kind of pink coloring from farms in it).