Along with my recommendation to myself and to you today to get more exercise, read more widely, especially to treasure art, poetry, history and science books, I recommend to us to take better care of ourselves. As a fisheries/aquaculture scientist working internationally (and in my backyard), family and friends ask me all the time about these seafood cards that are designed to make seafood choices simpler for sustainability aficionados. Well-funded and well-respected organizations have distributed millions of these cards to conscious consumers, who, to a large degree, eat seafood only in restaurants. One of the most prominent recommendations on cards is not to eat farmed salmon.I won’t, but could, turn this piece into a textbook on salmon Salmo salar – the leaper in Latin. Aquaculture scientists have evolved with farmed salmon over the last 50-60 years. I know, as the first farmed salmon hit markets when I was a graduate student. During this time in the North Atlantic farmed salmon leaped to become a major global food source. When I was a boy, it was only a wild icon we could catch from rivers.
The farmed salmon we now buy is a synthetic fish. It’s no longer wild. Please don’t have a long, sad face if you eat chicken, beef or pork. All those animals are also synthetic, farmed species. The ancestor of cattle, the auroch is extinct (the last, 1627 in Poland)…the conservation/restoration science of all this is for another day. Today, global farmed salmon is ~2.5-3 MMT/year, with Norway and Chile the top producers, produced in cages, tanks and other systems in water and on land in both salt and freshwaters. There are environmental and ethical concerns…another story for another day. Massive investments in innovations in technology, processing, transportation, and marketing across global value chains deliver quality farmed salmon to you worldwide. This too, is another story for another day.
My role in this piece is to help stimulate you to eat knowledge about farmed salmon more voraciously. It is my opinion that there’s not enough of THAT eating happening.
I eat farmed salmon as I prefer fatty fish. I was raised in southern New England as a traditional Azorean-Portuguese immigrant. We eat a lot of seafood and fatty fish such as sardines. So, my palate is partially genetic. I also adore wild salmon from Alaska and Canada because they have much different textures and oil contents. I have one major problem with wild salmon; thus, they don’t get my Euros/dollars as much as the farmed. I try to avoid any wild salmon that originates from companies around the Prince William Sound (PWS), Alaska, USA, as I prefer to buy from truly wild sources. The PWS companies tell consumers a big fib, saying their salmon is “wild”, but they dump millions of hatchery reared salmon into net pens using feeds to rear fish to juvenile sizes – all aquaculture techniques - dump these fish into the North Pacific Ocean, then market them as “wild”. Meanwhile, salmon aquaculture in Alaska is illegal. Go figure. If I want to buy wild salmon, I want the truth. Tell the world that this is an “aquaculture-enhanced fishery” that NEEDS aquaculture to survive at the high production levels required for economic/social rural fishing community sustainability. It is HARD to distinguish a wild salmon from an aquaculture-enhanced salmon! There are no labels. This is difficult research to do, but it is worthy as you support food systems with your Euros/dollars.
Be careful, though, as not all farmed salmon are created equal. Even after a long and very worthy trip in November 2024 to Chile, where I learned about all the great work being done to prevent antibiotic overuse in Chilean salmon farming; I still do not have farmed salmon from Chile as my first choice. This makes some of my colleagues angry, but until Chile has a better regulatory and management system akin to the high standards of Norway, the east coast of Canada, or Scotland, I’ll give Chilean farmed salmon a lower choice, unless there's more information other than just Cosco stuff. In addition, poor enforcement of existing environmental laws and the lack traceability of their fishmeals bothers me. I don’t want to support in any way the purchase of salmon from operations that purchase fish meal from those horrible plants in Chimbote, Peru where it is said to “rain fish meal”, with consequent terrible effects on human health. I want to see Chilean farmed salmon (and their Norwegian investors/owners) meet the high standards they have in Norway everywhere they farm salmon, not only in Chile, but also in rapidly developing new salmon farming countries such as Iceland. This too, is another story for another day.
In the USA you can identify where salmon is from due to COOL (Country of Origin Labeling). It’s the law but I see many retailers not following it – call them out like I do. I look for responsible producers and salmon farming that provides more clear demonstrations of investments in social and environmental improvements – there are farms in Norway, Eastern Canada/Maine USA and Scotland that head my list.
Salmon (wild and farmed) have high levels of omega-3’s important for not only physical but also mental health. Farmed salmon have more omega-3's because of the feeds (fish meals, oils, and now more algal oils). Both farmed and wild salmon are mercury free and lower in PCBs than many commonly purchased fatty foods, like meats and butter. But because most of the world's people get most of their animal proteins from meats, body burdens of PCBs are derived from those foods, not farmed fish. But PCB levels in all of these farmed foods are far below WHO, EU, FDA and Environment Canada action levels to be of concern to human health.
Thus, I recommend eating salmon and enjoy it, with more knowledge, and sharing that increased knowledge with others you know and love. Also, try to make the best choices you can with your forks and chopsticks using your Euros, manats, rupiah, and dollars to better help people and support the producing companies stand out from the others.
There ARE salmon farming companies that really ARE concerned and ARE implementing programs that advance ecological salmon aquaculture within the framework of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
If you adore salmon as much as me, don’t let anyone tell you that all farmed salmon is evil and that all wild salmon are blessed. Eat knowledge as much as that salmon. Increase your healthy living and support the evolution of the blue revolution.
References from NYGP
Costa-Pierce, B.A. 2023. Ocean food systems and hybrid seafood production: Transdisciplinary case studies of cod, eels, salmon and lobster. Sustainable Development Research 5 (1): 31-43. https://doi.org/10.30560/sdr.v5n1p31
Mozaffarian, D. & Rimm, E.B., 2006. Fish intake, contaminants, and human health: evaluating the risks and the benefits. JAMA 296 (15), 1885–1899.
Saktrakulkla, P. et al. 2020. PCBs in food. Environ Sci Technol. 54(18): 11443–11452. doi:10.1021/acs.est.0c03632.
Santerre, C. 2010. The risks and benefits of farmed fish. Journal of the World Aquaculture Society 41(2): 250-257.
Tom, P. & P. Olin. 2010. Commercially Farmed and Wild-Caught Salmon Bon Appétit! California Sea Grant Extension, University of California Davis, California. http://seafood.ucdavis.edu/pubs/farmed_and_wild_salmon.pdf
Tom, P. & P. Olin. 2010. Farmed or Wild? Both Types of Salmon Taste Good and Are Good for You. Global Aquaculture Advocate. https://seafood.oregonstate.edu/sites /agscid7/files/snic/farmed-or-wild-both-types-of-salmon-taste-good-and-are-good- for-you.pdf.
Troell, M. et al. 2023. Perspectives on aquaculture's contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals for improved human and planetary health. Journal of the World Aquaculture Society 54(2): 251–342. https://doi.org/10.1111/jwas.12946
