I'd dye for you

by Anne Metz, Posted May 17th 2006 @ 4:04PM

When I was in Seattle last weekend, I couldn't help but notice a popular (and clever!) bumper sticker all over the city: "Farm-Raised Salmon Dyed for You."

Meanwhile, an interesting article in the New York Times dropped some remarkable facts about recent trends in smoked salmon:

Many -- nay, most -- major retailers on both coasts and in the Midwest (Wegmans and Costco included) buy their smoked salmon from one source: Brooklyn's Acme Smoked Fish.

Whereas the industry shifted from nearly exclusive use of wild salmon in the 1980s to farm-raised salmon in the 1990s, recent bad press about farm-raised salmon -- like the aforementioned bumper sticker -- has caused the industry to swing back towards wild salmon.
Smoked salmon has undergone a remarkable shift of late: unlike most everything else, smoked salmon is less salty than ever before.

Still to be determined is how the Pacific Northwest wry bumper sticker industry will respond.

Filed Under: Farming, Ingredients
Tags: america, dinner, farm raised, FarmRaised, fish, pacific northwest, PacificNorthwest, salmon, seattle, smoked salmon, SmokedSalmon

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

5-17-2006 @4:43PM B said... What's wrong with farm raised salmon?
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5-17-2006 @6:56PM Mike said... I just finished reading "The Wal-Mart Effect". One chapter was about cheap Chilean salmon and how it's raised. This probably does not apply to every single farm-raised salmon out there, but does show that salmon isn't always just salmon.

http://www.reclaimdemocracy.org/walmart/2006/fishman_chile_salmon_farm.php

The way it's fed, grown and processed is no worse than your basic beef feed lot system, but that might not be something you'd want to compare your fish to.
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5-17-2006 @7:29PM Anne Metz said... Yeah, I have to say the feedlot system doesn't exactly inspire confidence either. Have you ever read Michael Pollan's article "Power Steer"? Pretty incredible.
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5-18-2006 @6:00AM Berkana said... Farm raised salmon are not fed a diet of krill and other such critters. Unfortunately, it is the diet of the wild salmon that gives its flesh that orange color. Farm raised salmon have grey flesh, which is unappetizing in appearance. To give the salmon a familiar color, the salmon farmers dye the flesh with astaxanthin and cataxanthin.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. I don't know about cataxanthin, but astaxanthin is an extremely strong fat soluble anti-oxidant. (It's coored a rich redish orange.) It is 400 times more potent than vitamin E when it comes to stopping free radicals and oxidation damage. My local health food stores even sell astaxanthin dietary supplements.

My suspicion is that cataxanthin probably has an antioxidant effect as well.

I am personally in favor of farming fish, even if they have to dye the fish with antioxidants to make it look appetizing; the other option is the inevitable overfishing of the oceans to keep up with demand, and the associated over-catch (undesired fish) that are killed, which has a terrible impact on the ecosystem.
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