Should I avoid farmed fish?

[wryter2000]

My husband wouldn't buy farmed fish because of environmental concerns. (He was a Reaganite when I met him. After 25 years of marriage, he ended up a better liberal than me.) I respected his opinion on that, but lately, the salmon at Costco is looking better and better. All of their non-shellfish fish is farmed. Should I stick by Hal's resolve not to buy farmed fish, or give in to that lovely salmon?

[NMDemDist2]

1. considering the state of the ocean waters and the levels of pollution

farm fish is about the only ones i'll eat

what environmental concerns did he express?

[wryter2000]

5. I think it was pollution from fish "waste"

Large populations of fish kept in close quarters -- too much sh*t put into the water.

[likesmountains 52]

11. The last time I ate "farmed" salmon it tasted like sh*t....literally...I

never have bought any farmed fish since then..

[OldLeftieLawyer]

2. YES!

Just check out what they're fed. Hatchery pellets are hardly good for anyone.

Hal's right.

[wryter2000]

6. thanks

I think I'm going to have to think about this some more.

[Shakespeare]

3. On the whole, yes, but I think there are a couple of kinds that are OK:

Catfish and tilapia, I believe, are grown under fairly safe/friendly conditions (and neither of these are ocean-farmed--catfish certainly is OK). I'd avoid any farmed coldwater fish such as salmon.

[wryter2000]

4. Thanks

I do love catfish.

[The empressof all]

7. I'd rather eat frozen wild salmon than farmed

I'm lucky to live in PNW where our access to fresh wild salmon is a little more available than the rest of the country. When prices are down I will buy whole fish and freeze them for summer barbeque's. When Copper River is on sale I'll take as much money as I can spare and stuff my freezer. When all else fails Trader Joes usually has some half way decent prices on frozen salmon. We had some last night actually from TJ's. I think it was Sockeye and it was good.

Salmon is usually always expensive even when it's on sale. I can get Pink and Chum pretty reasonably but we just don't care for them enough to buy them unless I'm making Salmon cakes.

Halibut has also been very very expensive this year....

[Shakespeare]

8. TJ's wild alaskan salmon is VERY good.

And locally, we get SUPER fresh salmon from Bodega Bay (our local independent market carries it), but it's doubtful we'll get any this year due to the fishing ban (and a big thank you to the Oregon farmers for stealing the salmon's water from the Klamath, thereby totalling fucking the salmon population for years. :sarcasm: ) But I'm not bitter. No, no, no. Or angry. Nope.

The Bodega Bay salmon (which actually comes from the NoCal coast or Sacramento river) is the most amazingly great fish I've ever had. Ever.

[hvn_nbr_2]

9. According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium's "Seafood Watch" guide...

Wild-caught Alaskan salmon is a "best" (green).

Wild-caught California, Oregon, and Washington salmon are "good" (yellow).

All farmed salmon worldwide is an "avoid" (red).

I don't have time to review it all now, but I seem to remember that their ratings are based on both healthfulness and environmental concerns.
http://www.mbayaq.org/cr/seafoodwatch.asp

(Not from the seafood watch guide) One of the issues with farmed fish is that they feed them a lot of antibiotics because they have to to keep them healthy in the close quarters that they live. I've read that Norwegian fish farms use less or no antibiotics because they feed them a natural substance that stimulates the fish's immune systems. Something called beta-1,3-1,6-glucans, which is extracted from some kind(s) of mushrooms. You can also get that in health food stores to stimulate human immune systems. It's expensive. There's another kind called beta-1,3-glucans, which is considerably less expensive and, presumably, less effective.

[politicat]

15. Antibiotics is old; no longer used.

http://www.imr.no/english/news/2004/putting_paid_to_myths_about_farmed_fish
US district court of appeals archives 2002 - antibiotics, GM fish and waste pollution was banned in 2002 by a US Court of Appeals injunction. The case has not been appealed to the Supreme Court, and unless another DCoA rules in contradiction to the ruling, it will stand.

http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/mediacenter/aquaculture/docs/UNHs%20Farmed%20Fish%20FAQs_Feb%202006.pdf

[calico1]

10. There is a big difference between Pacific salmon and

farm raised salmon or Atlantic salmon. I go to a local fish market to get Pacific salmon and it costs me $9.99 a lb. I try to get it at least twice a month. The Pacific salmon is much more nutritious so I am willing to pay the price difference. If you want to save some money on salmon, get canned Alaskan salmon.

[politicat]

12. My opinion....

For what it's worth:

The Pacific salmon runs are at about 1% of what they were when they were first documented in 1914. That says to me that the wild stocks are in serious trouble, and must be given time to recover. So I refuse to eat Pacific wild salmon.

Pacific farm salmon tends to be fed a processed mixture of feeder fish, fish waste and corn. Salmon aren't supposed to eat corn, and it takes a lot of energy to go out and catch fish to feed to fish, so that puts the energy debt pretty high. In terms of environmental damage, it's the energy debt (Pac farm salmon provide about 1 calorie for every 25 it takes to get them to the plate) rather than the waste that's the big deal. The waste is bad, but it's "organic" waste, in that it biodegrades quickly and doesn't cause significant damage to the local ecosystem.

Then there's Atlantic salmon. The North Sea used to be highly toxic, but the EU, the ECC and the nations in the area have done a brilliant job cleaning it up, and the major polluters (off-shore oil rigs) have become really, really clean because spilled oil can't be sold. (Duh!) So while Atlantic salmon used to be pretty scary stuff, young Antlantic salmon are pretty clean, and because the waters are colder, have a higher Omega-3 concentration.

They're farming salmon off the Norway and Irish coasts right now, and the wild stocks are in pretty good shape now, but wild fish tend to be older fish, and so have had more time to bioaccumulate heavy metals and PCBs, while farmed fish are younger and their water is more carefully monitored for pollutants. So Atlantic farmed salmon usually has a lower heavy metal and PCB load, and European farmed Atlantic salmon isn't fed corn. However, all salmon has a fairly high energy debt because they're carnivores rather than omnivores or herbivores.

When we eat salmon, primarily smoked salmon, we get a Norwegian imported farmed Atlantic salmon. But we for the reasons above, we don't eat much salmon -- it just has too much of a debt load.

Tilapia, farm trout, catfish and almost all shellfish are farmed. They're also very low on the food chain. We don't eat a lot of wild-caught fish period because there are very few species that can sustain the level of fishing that is currently going on, and I don't want to contribute to that. (Atlantic Cod, Orange Roughy, Chilean Sea Bass and several shark species are in serious, endangered species type trouble because of overfishing.)

And we live in the mountains, about as far from an ocean as it's possible to get. It's kind of irresponsible to be macking down seafood that has to be flown in, frozen, and maintained frozen for long periods of time.

[wryter2000]

13. Thanks

I always thought it would be better to leave wild populations alone because they're in danger of over-fishing. But, Hal had read somewhere that farmed salmon was very bad for the environment.

I think when I'm at Costco next time, I'll see if I can tell where the farmed salmon comes from. My memory wants to say South America, but who knows with my memory these days. :) I can tell you the Costco salmon is delicious.

[politicat]

14. The smoked is from Norway.

I don't know about the fresh, but there's frozen at ours that's from Ireland and Iceland (so North Atlantic.)