FARMED SALMON

I agree farmerman. How could farmed fish be unhealthy? That just doesn't make sense. As a big fish fan I say, keep on farming!

Fish farming is an absolute neccessity in my view, at the rate the world is taking fish from the sea, when my grandson is my age he will be eating fish flavoured soylent green.

omg, read an article and posted at PS regarding farmed Salmon.

Factory farmed salmon contain antibiotics, more fat content, and the poor fish's flesh dyed for color (consumers believe their purchasing wild salmon). Genetically altered fish don't sound like the healthiest "product" one could buy and eat, probably why most companies don't label "farmed" on packaging.

There were a zillion links regarding gm foods and the latest study posted at Power Steer thread at Abuzz, however, the sites been down.

Will research and post links.

farmed salmon is not genetically altered , lets not jump too high and make connection that srent correct. Antibiotics are fed in the meal and the salmon live their entire lives in a large 4 acre , 100+ ft deep pen that is open to the bay and tides. The concept is sound, i think the only chink is that the pens are left in one are for many years and 5 or 6 crops of salmon are raised in the same coves. Perhaps if they move.

As far as the coloring , it comes from additives to the meal and its a residue of lobster shell.and some other stuff like carotenoids

After reading the information posted at Fine Cooking and Zaar about farmed salmon, it's just one more thing I'm not going to touch. Luckily, I'm not wild about salmon, so it won't be greatly missed in this house.

whatd they say ?

Farmerman, the following link explains how salmon are grown -

http://www.ecotrust.org/publications/farmed_salmon_steak.html

Not a good product for either humans or the enviornment. I'm sure the fish farmed arn't happy with the deal either Farmers know the gray salmon won't sell well, so a dye called astaxanthin added to the feed.

If they're putting antibiotics into the feed and the pens are open to currents, then the antiBs are getting into the greater aquatic system. We all know that antiBs in the world's waters are a bad thing. Don't we?

There must be a way to farm fish, but it's not worth doing if the practice is further hurting the rest of the world.

Little Kay, factory farming large animals places a tremendous strain on the surrounding enviornmental area also. Feed lots cram many animals in small spaces, where waste cannot be absorbed by the land.

A terrible situation for the animals, enviornment, and consumer health.

oh, sorry, farmerman. i didn't see your question. There were lengthy threads on this issue, with biologists and chemists weighing in. My bottom-line summary of the whole thing is that the antibiotics and food colouring chemicals are not something I want to knowingly ingest. The whole issue of antibiotics moving into the general environment is more political, but part of the picture for me as well.

stradee, believe me, I know how salmon are grown. That is why I asked the question based upon an ad in the NYTimes which wa, by the way, in part, funded by the fishing industry. I always question motives , even regarding such panic reports. Id suggest you do some more reading and dont be too quick with posting info about a chemical like astaxanthins, whcixh are gotten by krill , from their diets of algaes which are sequesterers of these antioxidants. Predator fish eat krill. So farmed salmon are fed fish meal and , of course, additives and the natural asta-2. But you have stated something like "do you know that oranges contain toxic substances like citric acid/"

My original question, is being answered. and, my statement of "not growing salmon is not an alternative that, to me, makes any sense'.
PCBs were listed as a toxicant from farmed salmon. the salmon caught in the wild is already monitored for pCBs and there are often pCB advisories given for areas in Canada where people fish for wild salmon. whats youre choice/ improve farming? or decadecimate the remaining wild salmon stocks and have an unavailable resource forewver? i dont even like the taste of wild salmon cans of which, the companies used to add coal tar derivative dyes to the packaged meat. Now thats healthy. Of course weve grown past that. So why not do the same with pen raising salmon and other seafoods?
Ehbeth, as I said, Im skeptical about the motives of the NYTimes ad. Who sponsored it? why/ are they competitors? when anyone says "we must stop this "factory farming' for Gods sake" I really get my hackles up. Sounds a bit like Copernicus getting a chewing out by the church. I never said farm raised fish are without sin. However, theri sins arent mortal. WHy arent we getting on our governments to limit the sources of endocrine disrupters and estrogen mimics in our waterways/ these are mostly from simple ass detergents , nothing exotic. The rticles against Farm raised salmon, i think, are from major fishing industry reps and fishing countries, not a group of concerned scientists without personal axes. Ill bet most of the scientists are well remunerated for their opinions from a lobby7 of some sort.
Im not indicting, im deeply questioning motive
oh, heres a url on astaxanthin but of course, its from an industry advocacy group so theri own scientists produce the data
http://www.aquasearch.com/astax.htm

farmer - what is wrong with fishing restrictions for a long-term solution. Yes it'll put people out of work, yes people will bitch and moan about the price of and scarcity of fish. It's too bad, but I think it's the only responsible way to be able to keep fish around to eat for ever. Farming the fish may work best in small batches and those may become more cost-effective after the fish prices rise dramatically.

Stradee - yep, we should have learned what mass-farming does to the environment by now.....

lilk. i cant buy that. WHy dont we just quit space exploration. Why cant we do both. youve gotta agree that there is no rush to make free swimming fish stocks sustainable. in New Brunswick, this year, hundreds of fishermen were cited for taking wild salmon when the season has been closewd for years due to extreme overfishing. Codfish, uswed to live in the bay of Fundy and off the banks in numbers thicker than any farmed salmon density. now theyre almost extinct and there is a ban on codfishing except for specific times of year and xtreme limits.

Im questioning youre, ehbeths, and stradees fear of the word 'chemical' yet i just said, the most dangerous chemical weve been seeing in our waterways are DETERGENTS. they are major endocrine disrupters. Industry is quietly trying to reformulate surfactants and dispersants so that they dont polymerize in the environment and cause 3 headed frogs. Yet we seem to quietly accept this condition, or the fact that city water contains chloroamino compounds that are dangerous to sensitive populations like immuno compromized people and kids.

Salmon farming needs some changes to become eco-friendly. I dont hide that, but to try to ban it entirely as unsafe technology is midieval thinking.

I didn't say anything about chemicals besides those that have antiB effects.

There's nothing wrong with balance, farmerman. What Little K, Ebeth, and I are concerned with are the foods produced in factory farming, and gm crops, where the amount of toxins, fat, and antibiotics are forced fed animals for quick growth and mass production. The waste produced by large feed lots cannot be sustained by the land. The same with sea farming. Just visiting an area where feed lots operate, a person can view the blood, feces, (and whatever else the animals are forced to eat) floating in large pools - poisoning everything around the area, plus the stuff seeps into ground water. Sea farming waste is dumped directly into the oceans and bays.

No amount of stats can convince the viewer the area, or the product produced, is healthy. We as consumers have an obligation to research what companies are adding to their products. Not surprisingly, there are more organic farms being initiated - plus their product packaging contain USDA Organic labels.

The endocrine disruptor tests are a double edged sword. First, companies used animal tests to determine if humans could tolerate the chemicals. Then, released those same chemicals into the enviornment. Now, the government wants to spend millions more testing animals to see how those same chemicals are affecting human endocrine disruptors.

Aquaculture is here to stay, like it or not, as our demand for fish has increased over the last decade. However, not all fish farms are equal. Here's an idea: How about consumers educating themselves a little bit as to where their products are coming from, and if all this cruelty proves to be going on at said farm, demand that your supplier start carrying fish from a more environmentally friendly source. This is the problem really. Everybody wants somebody else to fix things for them, and that irks me. Incidentally, with all the crap being dumped into the waters today, there is no evidence that wild salmon is any safer than farm-raised. Depending on where it's fished, it could likely be much higher in mercury, PCBs and other nasties than the farmed product.

Cav, there are people lobbying the US gov't to label foods according to where and how they are produced. People do want to know where their fish (and other products) come from. The gov't is saying that it'll cost too much for the producers to change their labels, blablabla....

I do chose my food carefully. I pay more for it, I know where it comes from, I try to buy from small and local farms.

I shop the same way littlek, both for my clients and myself.

I think that, idealy, the world should move in that direction for a healthier environment. I sure would hate to lose the option of buying avocadoes in february though.