Every now and then, and blogger or foodie is eager to promote the consumption of Alaska salmon. Whether they are doing this on their own free will, or paid to do so is always questionable.
Alaska salmon is a great, healthy food that we should enjoy eating. In fact, it hardly needs promoting.
That makes it even more disappointing that some, like this latest from “Healthiest Breakfast”, (Wild salmon or Farm raised salmon?) feel the need to attack other salmon suppliers to promote Alaska salmon - in this case farm-raised salmon. Are they feeling market pressure, are they threatened by the competition, are they trying to demarket competition to promote sales? Perhaps they just enjoy penning a negative article full of errors - easy to do when you’re an anonymous writer attacking the product of people you will probably never meet face to face.
Whatever the reason, it is getting tiring, especially given the fact that the Alaska salmon fishery does rely heavily on ‘aquaculture’ – growing salmon (1.7 billion yearly) with similar methods that salmon farmers use.
This type of product promotion isn’t needed and actually does more harm than good. Salmon suppliers (wild fishers and fish farmers) should be working together to promote consumption of all salmon – with the assistance of aquaculture, there is still room to grow the market.
Unwarranted and incorrect information about salmon will only scare people away from a healthy food and toward other meats that are not as healthy and may have a higher carbon footprint.
We’re not anonymous, and we oppose farmed salmon. Our view is that in the long run, wild fish are the best choice in terms of sustainability and nutrition. Wild fish need clean environments. Farmed fish can be produced more cheaply in the short-term. This undercuts the value of wild fish, which in turn undercuts the value of clean environments. The more despoiled the environment becomes, the fewer wild fish we have, and so the cycle goes where wild, sustainable fisheries are replaced by farmed fish. One of the reasons we – and others – oppose farmed salmon, then, is pure economics. Cheap, farmed salmon makes it harder for those catching, processing and marketing wild fish to make a living. Cheap, farmed salmon makes it easier for legislatures to approve dams, mines, and development which adversely impacts wild fish. You’re living in a dream world if you expect the average guy who makes his living on wild – or even on ranched salmon – to extend a welcoming hand to the guy whose undercutting him with a cheaper, inferior product… a product which may eventually put him out of business. For the reasons mentioned above, you won’t get support from environmentalists either. And from those of us who catch, process and dine on the fish we catch – clean, healthy, additive free wild and ranched fish… well, we couldn’t be on a more different page.
Hi Barbra and Jack, I guess we’ll both enjoy our dream worlds. We’ll dream that all seafood suppliers can work together to market a wonderful, healthy product regardless of species, the country of origin or the method of capture/culture. And you can continue to live in a world where, “in the long run”, wild fish can alone supply the future demand for seafood.
We appreciate you admitting that the motivation to demarket a competitor is economics.
But we’re not sure how you would believe that only wild fish require “clean environments”. That, of course, applies to cultured fish as well.
And please understand, that wild salmon in Alaska started dissappearing long before aquaculture was even a word. It was because of overfishing…due to short supply and high demand.
Enjoy dreaming,
TTAAS
TTAAS- Your condescending attitude says more about you than even your illogical comments can. Wild salmon are threatened by many factors, including bycatch, pollution, overfishing, and of course disease- one source of which is farmed salmon. Yes, farmed salmon require a clean environment, but it is a manufactured environment, not a natural one. Farmed salmon don’t ever get to visit the rivers and streams that wild salmon do, so why would a salmon farmer care if the rivers and streams get destroyed?
Do you really think environmentalists have an economoic motivation to demarket ‘competitiors’, being that they are in competition with no one? Yet they too are opposed to farmed salmon. This is economics far beyond the fish market, though you either do not comprehend that or choose to ignore it. The documentary “Walmart- the High Cost of Low Price” explains this quite well.
Sadly, because of factors including farmed salmon, it may indeed be a dream world that would have wild salmon supplying future demand for wild salmon, but it is not unrealistic. Eliminating all bycatch ALONE would more than eliminate any short supply.
Hi Julie, thanks for your comments. We would like to respond (to the facts and not to your judgement of our character).
Firstly, farm-raised salmon are not raised near, or in rivers or streams. Ocean-raised salmon are raised for 2/3rds of their life in a natural environment – the ocean – which is why we refer to farmers needing to care for the area in which their fish are raised. You are correct though, that when salmon are raised in hatcheries and in tanks on land that this is an artificial environment.
We don’t believe that all environmentalists are intent on demarketing farm-raised fish, but we can absolutely prove that some philanthropic funders of some environmental groups have provided $$ to ENGOs to do exactly that – demarket farm-raised salmon. If you would like that proof, you can search our blog, a blog called “Fair Questions” or, ask.
TTAAS