nieworld.com

Teachers

Students

Families

Projects

Email NIE

Thursday, July 31, 2003

Wild, farmed salmon debate always fresh

By CATHERINE KLASNE
NEWS-JOURNAL FOOD EDITOR

DAYTONA BEACH — A North American eats an average of about 16 pounds of fish per year, including about two pounds of salmon, says Christina Burridge, an expert on the wild salmon industry of a coastal Canadian province.

“Wild salmon does have something going for it in that it has a story,” says Burridge, who is head of British Columbia’s Seabridge Strategies Ltd. In fact, she continues, “story fish” aptly translates a name given to salmon by the Indian tribes of this continent’s northwest coast, also known as First Nations.

The tale of the life cycle of wild salmon has been told from the time of oral tradition. The fish’s struggle — to return from the ocean to the freshwater stream where it hatched in order to spawn and, in the case of Pacific salmon, die — has been romanced into myth.

But all most of us know about the salmon in refrigerated cases at our neighborhood superstores is that it purports to be fresh, or maybe previously flash-frozen.

One of our first questions when we approach any salmon should be: “Is it wild or farmed?” This matters most, according to commercial fishing and environmental experts and chefs in Vancouver, British Columbia. They speak of salmon with a fervor that may equal First Nations’ faith.

Wild tastes better, the chefs tell a group of food writers. “What I’m interested in is quality,” says Rob Clark, executive chef of the city’s C Restaurant, famous for its efforts to serve sustainable seafood. “The quality of something that’s taken care of in the wild cannot be beat.”

Nutritionally, wild cannot be beaten either. Lynn Hunter, who is fisheries and salmon aquaculture specialist for a Vancouver environmental research group, says there is at least 17 percent more saturated fat in farmed salmon than in wild, and the “healthy” fats, the omega-3 fatty acids, are much lower in farmed.

Since most of the fresh salmon we get locally is farmed, maybe we should be grateful that many beg to differ. Even Chef Clark admits, “If you serve 300,000 North Americans, they would probably prefer farmed salmon over wild the same way they would prefer Cheez Whiz over the taste of farmhouse cheese.”

Farmed is milder tasting and much more available, at a considerably lower price. Its story, while not one of anthropomorphic bravery and conquest, is interesting, too.

TRUE COLORS

Overwhelmingly, the kind of salmon that is farm-raised is Atlantic salmon, although many pens are in the Pacific Ocean (along wild salmon migratory routes, environmentalists protest). Since farmed salmon aren’t free to feed themselves, they get a chow that contains the additives astaxanthin and canthaxanthin.

Salmon farmers describe them as antioxidants, specifically carotenoids, that help the fish to survive. Astaxanthin is the compound naturally found in krill that wild salmon eat, making their flesh naturally pretty in pink, says Vivian Krause. She works for Nutreco Holding N.V. — an international company that makes human and animal food — and is a sometimes spokesman for the British Columbia Salmon Farmers Association.

In similar fashion, lobsters and flamingos also attain their showy reddish hue. Without the feed supplement, farmed salmon hardly would be recognizable. It would be grayish.

Earlier this year, new labeling appeared on fresh salmon at local Albertsons supermarkets: “farm-raised color added.” The grocery chain added the phrase after a California class-action lawsuit was filed against it and two other major retailers for failing to note that farmed salmon contain colorants.

News stories about the legal action described the farmed salmon flesh as “dyed,” possibly implying the fish is colored post-harvest, which is not exactly the case.

This perception, though, is not the only dam over which salmon farmers must leap.

FARMING FEARS

Environmental problems with fish farms are neatly summarized by writer Lisa Hamilton in the July-August issue of Utne magazine: “The fish produce a lot of waste that pollutes the surrounding water, and, when they escape, they can spread their inferior ... traits into the wild.”

Diseases of the penned fish, such as “sockeye flu,” and parasites like sea lice also may affect the wild salmon.

“What’s more,” Hamilton writes, “in order to taste good, the farmed fish are fed meal made from large amounts of the wild fish they eat naturally.” The farmed fish in effect compete with their wild cousins for food, and their intensive feeding also may be responsible for elevating PCB levels in their flesh.

The watchdog Environmental Working Group issued a warning on Tuesday that farmed salmon should not be consumed more than once a month. Admittedly small-scale testing — 10 samples of farm-raised salmon purchased in three U.S. cities — showed 16 times the level of dioxin-like PCBs as found in wild salmon. Still, the farmed salmon samples fall within PCB tolerances allowed by the federal Food and Drug Administration.

And the farmed fish also is attractive, first, because it can be purchased fresh year-round. Wild salmon are caught during runs that may be only days long, depending on species and location.

“The vast majority of the wild harvest goes into cans,” says Krause. “The vast majority of the farmed harvest is served fresh.” Freezing the wild catch is also a possibility, and is still preferred over the farmed product by many chefs, but there is no market for it here in the fresh-obsessed United States.

For consumers interested in upping their intake of omega-3 fatty acids — credited with lowering the risk of heart disease, cancer, type II diabetes and even depression — farmed salmon apparently is better than no salmon at all. For the single species of Atlantic salmon, the omega-3 content doesn’t vary between wild and farm-raised. Among the five wild Pacific salmon species available in North America, it can be higher. Sockeye salmon has the most omega-3 of any fish, about 2.7 grams per 100-gram portion, according to the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.

Canning doesn’t measurably affect omega-3 content, so canned might be a good choice for some recipes. Values for canned wild sockeye and wild sockeye cooked with dry heat are virtually the same.

Fresh sockeye is a personal favorite of Executive Chef Hiroshi Noguchi of the Orlando Renaissance Resort. He admires its mild flavor and says June, July and August are good months to get the fish in from the Oregon coast and Vancouver. Other fresh wild Pacific species currently used at the resort’s Atlantis restaurant are king, coho or silver, and pink.

LOCAL OPTIONS?

Locally, for fresh or frozen salmon, there’s often no choice. Only one specialty fish market in Volusia or Flagler County currently claims to carry fresh wild salmon, and no supermarkets do.

For when there is availability, the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute offers taste notes: King, also known as chinook or spring salmon is “robustly flavored,” sockeye “delectable,” keta or chum (sometimes marketed as silverbrite) “mild-flavored,” and pink “delicately delicious.”

Noguchi’s preference for sockeye extends back to his Japanese childhood. However, he believes in serving locally caught fish. “Somebody from Oregon, they don’t want salmon here,” he says. His out-of-town customers want skate wing, grouper, mahi and redfin. If stone crab is in season, they want to try it.

His suggestion for someone who likes fresh fish but who is trying to get at least two servings of fish high in omega-3s every week: Try tuna.

Copyright © 2009 NIE WORLD (www.nieworld.com). All content copyrighted and may not be republished without permission. The News-Journal has no control over and is not responsible for content on other Web sites. Privacy Policy.