INDEPTH: SALMON
Something fishy about farmed salmon?
CBC News Online | January 9, 2004
A worker pulls Atlantic salmon along the state-of-the-art processing line at the Englewood Packing Co. plant in Beaver Cove on Vancouver Island, B.C., Nov. 4, 2003. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
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Four years ago, the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance issued a release titled, "Facts Regarding Farmed Salmon Issues in Canada." It began by stating that farmed salmon is "a safe and nutritious food product," with high levels of omega-3 fatty acids. It said regular consumption of farmed salmon reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, depression, Alzheimer's disease and childhood asthma. It suggested people eat two or three servings of fish every week, with at least one portion "an oily fish like salmon."
Four years later, in January 2004, the journal Science warned that farmed salmon should be eaten only infrequently – a meal a month, perhaps every two months – because the fish pose serious risks of cancer. The problem appears to be the diet fed to farmed salmon, which is said to contain 10 times the contaminants found in the diet of wild salmon.
Federal officials in Canada and the United States say the amount of contaminants in farmed salmon – things like pesticides and PCBs – is not dangerous. Officials at Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency say the dangers of eating contaminated farmed salmon are overstated, as is the suggestion that intake of farmed salmon be severely restricted.
Twenty years ago, farmed salmon was in its infancy. By 2004, more than a million tonnes of farmed salmon is consumed every year, which represents more than half of all salmon consumed worldwide.
Academics also differ on the risks of eating farmed salmon.
Miriam Diamond, who teaches chemistry at the University of Toronto, says the benefits of eating salmon – farmed or wild – may outweigh the risks of getting cancer from the PCBs they contain. David Carpenter, a professor of environmental health and toxicology at the University of Albany in New York, says people should consume far less farmed salmon than they do.
Carpenter co-authored the study on farmed salmon in the journal Science. Commenting on contaminants in farmed fish, Carpenter said, "These levels are sufficiently high in farmed salmon that unlimited consumption of these salmon is unwise."
Other facts:
- Most contaminants in fish are contained in the skin, so removing the skin and grilling the fish removes a significant amount of pollutants such as dioxins and PCBs.
- Nearly all canned salmon consists of wild salmon, which is healthier than farmed salmon.
- Farmed salmon is naturally grey in colour. Wild salmon is pink, the result of a diet rich in carotenoids, from their carnivorous diet of shrimp and other fish. Farmed salmon are given an additive to make them any shade of pink the fish farmer wants.
- Farmed salmon, like most domestic beef, are also given antibiotics to fight disease, and a special diet to make them grow quickly so they can be marketed faster.
- Many foods have PCBs, but farmed salmon tend to have two to five times the PCB levels of beef, pork, milk and eggs.
- Canada farms about 60,000 tonnes of salmon a year – 50,000 tonnes in British Columbia, 10,000 in the Maritimes. Salmon farming is a $700-million-a-year business in Canada.
- Canada exports about 80 per cent of its farmed salmon.
- Norway is one of the largest producers of farmed salmon, some 470,000 tonnes a year.
The Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance, the organization that four years ago recommended two or three fish meals a week, reacted to the Science study by saying farmed salmon remains a healthy and safe food.
"Our number 1 concern is the consumer," said David Rideout, executive director of the CAIA. "And we don't like the fact that contaminants are in our food supply, and we're doing everything we can to reduce that."
Carpenter, the co-author of the Science study, says it would help if the aquaculture industry switched the diet of farmed salmon from fish pellets made of ground-up anchovy remains to protein-rich plants such as soybeans.
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