If you read our “Tale of Two Salmon” post last week, you’ll remember that it contained a little soap box moment in the form of an exhortation to avoid farmed salmon. A reader, unhappy with our position, let us know in no uncertain terms that we were spreading malicious lies for no purpose other than perhaps to promote Alaska fishing. Our first reaction was to delete the comment and pretend nobody ever disagrees with what we write, but decided that would be dishonest. Our blog is mostly intended to be fun, but we also want it to get people to think about what they eat – where it comes from, what it does to their bodies, how it impacts our environment. So your comments, even when critical, are always welcome. And while we wish the reader would have come at the issue with a little less venom, we take the point.
The growing scientific consensus is that salmon aquaculture, for all its promise, is, on balance, an unsound practice. We aren’t trying to scare anyone. We just think people should think about whether they really need to eat salmon at all. We agree that the wild fisheries are under tremendous stress, but where those fisheries are deemed healthy and sustainable, we say eat the salmon when you can get it. But if the choice is between “affordable” farm-raised salmon or no salmon at all, our vote is for no salmon consumption. It’s time to let our wild fisheries heal.
A quick search of all that is available to us online on the subject yields far more than we could ever capture here, but we encourage anyone who is interested in doing their own homework to do so. It won’t take you long to discover that wildlife biologists of every stripe as well as fishermen, state and national governments and research institutions are all coming to the same conclusion – salmon aquaculture does more harm than good to the salmon fisheries. We include here a few links for your reference. The first link is very compelling in its examination of the impacts of salmon farming on British Columbia’s wild salmon populations. I particularly like the PBS link because it offers a counterpoint by a representative of the industry. All points of view should have a voice.
http://www.watershed-watch.org/programs/aquaculture.html
http://na.oceana.org/en/blog/2010/02/film-reveals-global-scourge-of-salmon-aquaculture
http://www.pewtrusts.org/our_work_detail.aspx?id=600
http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060033
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=george&dbid=96
http://www.pbs.org/emptyoceans/fts/salmon/index.html
http://storybank.stanford.edu/stories/mapping-impact-salmon-farming-southern-chile
Our readers are always welcome to comment here. But we ask that we remain civil in our ongoing discussions of our food choices.
Cheers,
Steve & Jason
(y)our food choices™ 