This blog has featured Vital Choice Wild Seafood and Organics a couple of times. We’ve exposed the fact that this company promotes its products by attacking the competition. You know, the ‘ol “only eat wild, don’t eat farmed” rhetoric.

It’s obvious why – by attacking your largest competitor you can sell more of your product. Hey, it’s how politicians get elected and governments are formed!

But, someone the other day challenged us – do you have proof? So, we went looking…it didn’t take us long.

Here’s a quote from their website:

“Vital Choice contributes a portion of its net profits to the Weil Foundation, Raincoast Research Society, the Live Strong Foundation, The Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and other causes devoted to improving the health and well being of people and the planet that sustains us.”

So let us explain the significance of three of these “payouts” – and it ain’t because they improve the health of people and planet.

The Weil Foundation: Dr. Andrew Weil (Nutritionist for clients such as Oprah Winfrey) is paid to endorse Vital Choice products. Fair enough. Simply endorsing is one thing BUT this is the guy that appeared on Larry King Live in January of 2004 and pleaded for people to stay away from unhealthy foods which included pop, chips and…..farm-raised salmon. Come on Andrew, can you be any more obvious?

Raincoast Research Society: This Society is being paid by commercial fishing interest groups to attack farm-raised salmon. The latest study produced by this Society claimed up to 95% (the low number in the range was 9%, but no one uses that number!) of out-migrating juvenile salmon were perishing from farm produced sea lice (sea lice are found naturally on wild juvenile salmon by the way). The study was ripped apart by no less than twenty of the world’s leading fisheries scientists as a completely unfounded claim.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium: Ok, these guys produce the Seafood Watch pamphlets. So, MBA gives wild salmon a “green light” (the main product for Vital Choice) while it’s main competitor, farm-raised salmon, gets a “red light”. Vital Choice smiles and hands over the dough. A match made in heaven.

WARNING! All this back scratching is going to leave a mark.

It seems as though a fellow named Neil Zevnik is a fan of Alaska salmon. His latest article entitled, Pursuing Salmon: It’s Gotta Be Wild, sure smells fishy.

It’s the typical, farmed salmon bad / wild-caught salmon good rant. Of course, little fact to back up his opinion.

The fact that he carefully uses the term “wild caught” does suggest that he may understand that not all ‘wild’ salmon was born naturally in a river bed (The term “wild-caught” covers the fact that the salmon may be caught with a “wild method” but could be a hatchery raised replicate).

More interesting than his promotional article is his response to a comment posted below the article. One poster named ‘BannedNBoston’ recommends getting healthy Omega 3 fatty acids from hemp seeds and not salmon and links to a hemp seed website.

Mr. Zevnik’s response:

“As I acknowledged, hemp seed oil is certainly a good source of omega-3’s. I feel obliged to point out that the site you are quoting (and promoting) is one that sells the product, and therefore may not be an entirely unbiased source of information, don’t you think?”

Good advice Neil! But look at us square in the eye and say you aren’t just doing the same thing. Don’t blink now. Ohhh, you blinked…

The word “sustainable” is a frustrating word. It’s typically used to green-wash products and doesn’t usually back up the word with fact.

What does sustainable mean? There are many definitions and typically center around the “three pillars”; social, economic and environmental. Our definition is simple – sustainability means provided for today without jeopardizing tomorrow.

Earlier in the year this blog had warned that Copper River Sockeye from Alaska will be highly promoted in May (the start of the salmon run). We didn’t bother picking on every piece of advertising, but one recent posting by Clare Leschin-Hoar at TheKitchn.Com did catch our eye. This “Guest Post” followed the typical rant this blog has only come to recognize so well;

#1 – Salmon is good for you, but you shouldn’t eat farm-raised salmon for various health and environmental reasons.

#2 – Alaska salmon is the best option, because it’s “well managed and maintained, and therefore sustainable”.

And there’s where it all falls apart. When Clare Leshin-Hoar feels it necessary to quickly attack farm-raised salmon and then literally ignore the risks that salmon fishing in Alaska poses, our “promo-dar” (sorry, that’ s a bad rip-off of “gay-dar”) went off.

Dear Ms. Hoar (insert name joke here);

Alaska does farm raise billions of salmon each year. They call it salmon ranching. You cannot ignore the fact that the risks of salmon ranching are real and need to be discussed, not ignored. We here at www.alaskasalmonranching.wordpress.com challenge you to look at the facts and refrain from simply attacking the competition in an attempt at sponsoring your product.

Need proof? The photo credit in the article is given to the Copper River Marketing Association. There, that was easy.

On on-line salmon buying website does it’s best to promote Alaskan salmon. Too bad it feels that it has to attack the competition in order to boost sales. In the “commonly asked questions” page, it veers off from the positive into the slanderous “why you shouldn’t buy farmed salmon” rhetoric that consumers are growing tired of.

Here’s just one example of a flat-out lie taken directly from their site;

Q: Are all Salmon in Alaska Wild? A: YES, All the salmon found in Alaskan waters are wild! In fact it is illegal to farm salmon in Alaska.

We call bullshit on that one:

Prince William Sound Aquaculture Corporation, Alaska (salmon farm)

For more information on salmon farming in Alaska, click here.

Please welcome Laura Fleming to our blog. Laura works for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI). It’s the marketing firm that promotes everything Alaskan. And trust us, can Laura and the ASMI ever promote! Heck, they could probably sell you a rotting salmon carcass that’s labelled ‘aged jerky’.

In the comment section under a recent article entitled “25 things vanishing in America, part 2: Wild salmon”, Ms. Fleming is quick to promote her product, claiming that Alaska’s “abundant salmon runs are managed sustainably”.

Really? Well, consider this: 1 in 3 salmon from Alaska that are sold in stores in the US are actually salmon that are not “wild” – they were born in hatcheries and released into the ocean to find food. It’s called salmon ranching. Just because Alaska floods the ocean with billions of tiny salmon (1.5 billion to be precise) doesn’t make it sustainable.

And just because programs like the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Seafood Choices also promote your product, doesn’t make it sustainable either. These groups are simply extensions of ASMI.

But Laura does give some good advice, “don’t take my word for it, look for yourself!”. Yeah, look for yourself and find that all Laura and the ASMI do is attack competitors and use smoke and mirrors.

We’re on to ya’ Laura!

The Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program is at it again. For a program that apparently has hundreds of seafood species on their “what to eat/what to avoid” list, they sure have a focus on salmon. And a really keen interest in attacking farm-raised salmon. Makes you wonder why? Why the focus on just one species? Is there politics, protectionism or marketing at the root of this narrow minded attack?

A recent email from the Seafood’s Watch programmer, Serena Federman, promotes a new fish that’s been upgraded to “best choice”, but can’t seem to help herself from attacking farm-raised salmon;

Here’s her email:

“Arctic char is an up-and-coming alternative to farmed salmon because the texture and taste is similar. For this reason, we added it to all regional Seafood Watch pocket guide versions as a “Best Choice” back in January. Arctic char are in the salmon family and native to the northern regions of North America and Europe. Though it’s available wild-caught, char is typically raised in land-based re-circulating systems which reduce the risk of disease transfer, pollution and fish escapes. Like salmon, Arctic char are carnivores that require feed made from wild fish — causing a drain on the ocean’s natural food web. However, the amount of wild fish needed to produce farmed Arctic char is low compared to other carnivorous farmed fish like salmon and this one issue of concern does not warrant a lower overall Seafood Watch ranking. This makes Arctic char a great alternative for salmon lovers, especially now that the wild salmon fisheries in California and Oregon are currently closed. Wild Alaska salmon is still available and is a “Best Choice”". 

HOLD ON SERENA! You clearly state that what concerns you about farmed salmon is disease transfer, pollution, fish escapes and wild fish consumed in feed. Now, we could certainly debate that level of concern and argue, quite convincingly that farmed salmon is a very sustainable choice. Maybe another time. The REAL issue is this: you promote wild Alaskan salmon as a “Best Choice”, but cleverly avoid stating that 1 in 3 Alaskan salmon are not wild. They are raised in hatcheries, cultured in net pens and then released into the ocean to find food until returning to be caught in a commercial fishing net. So when you look at the impact of Alaska’s salmon ranching program, you have to consider disease transfer, pollution, fish escapes and wild fish consumed in feed. Let’s compare salmon ranching in Alaska against your concerns.

Disease transfer: 1.5 billion ranched salmon are not typically vaccinated against disease and are able to mix with wild salmon.

Pollution: There are more ranched salmon in the Pacific Ocean than farm-raised salmon – therefore more pollution may be created from ranched salmon.

Fish escapes: In Alaska, 1.5 billion salmon escape each year. (farm-raised salmon are kept seperate from wild salmon)

Wild fish consumed: Ranched salmon eat too. In the Pacific Ocean, there are more ranched salmon than there is farm-raised salmon and therefore more wild fish is eaten by ranched salmon than by farm-raised salmon.

Why does  Serena Federman and her Seafood Watch program not even make mention of these realities or discuss the fact that Alaska’s ”wild” salmon may not be so “wild? Perhaps her “Best Choice” would be to admit that her program is nothing more than a marketing gimmick for Alaska salmon.

“Wild caught” salmon. Interesting choice of words. Why is the word “caught” just kinda thrown in there willy nilly?

In our last blog, we defined what a real wild salmon is (spawned naturally in a river). We’ve also defined what a ranched salmon is (raised in a hatchery and net pen and released into the ocean to compete for food with wild salmon). Because ranched salmon are not at all wild, they can’t be sold as such. And when fishing boats catch salmon in Alaska, it’s hard to identify which is wild and which is ranched – although there’s a 1 in 3 chance of it being ranched. So, brilliant marketers figured that if you call them wild “caught”, meaning the process of catching the salmon was in a traditionally wild manner (caught with a boat and hook or net), then they’ve got it covered.

Truth in marketing?

One shining example of using the term “wild caught” to maximum benefit would be the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program. They give a ‘green light’ to eating wild “caught” salmon from Alaska. They make no mention whatsoever of the salmon ranching program that has produced those fish. Nada. Why is this important you may ask?

Well, this Seafood Watch program purports to base its green/yellow/red listings on science. It uses this science to grade each fish on sustainability and health. By ignoring the fact that 1 in 3 salmon from Alaska are artificially propogated (farmed) for up to half its life cycle, means the staff at Monterey Bay don’t have to worry about looking into the potential environmental impacts of ranching salmon. Why is this important you may ask…again?

Well, the Seafood Watch program is quite hard on many types of farmed seafood, it seems especially nasty toward farmed salmon. Whether or not that tough ranking is fair is very debatable. To the point: if farm-raised salmon is graded based on the culturing technique applied, then why shouldn’t Alaskan salmon be graded on this same criteria?

That would be fair, wouldn’t it?

Alaska salmon is sold as wild. A fair question is: are they really “wild”?

According to one definition of the term wild, Alaska might be misrepresenting their salmon product;

According to the Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council,

“Salmon are considered “wild” if they have spent their entire life cycle in the wild and originate from parents that were also produced by natural spawning and continuously lived in the wild.”

So, by that definition, the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute is falsely

False advertising?

advertising. 1 in 3 salmon from Alaska spend up to 2 years of their short life cultured by man (or woman of course!) in hatcheries and net pens.

The fact that Alaska salmon are half-farmed is not the issue here. The issue is the false representation of their product and Alaska’s tireless condemnation of other farm-raised salmon.

In our next blog, we’ll look at the term “wild-caught” or “line-caught” – two adjectives commonly used by “wild” salmon marketers to confuse the consumer.

Who the hell is Dr. Joseph Mercola and why is he giving some pretty uneducated personal opinion on “what you need to know about farmed fish“?

Well, it turns out the self prescribed ‘good doctor’ is promoting Alaskan seafood by attacking the competition.  He not only recommends to his faithful to eat Alaskan salmon, but he goes so far as to provide a brand name – Vital Choice Seafood.

His diatribe follows the typical formula of attack.  Let’s take a few of his statements about farm-raised fish and see how Alaska ranched salmon (ranched salmon from Alaska are the main source of salmon for Vital Choice) stack up; 

• “it takes 1.9 kg of wild fish to produce 1 kg of farm-raised fish”

The truth – due to new diets in feed, it now takes about 1 .2 kg of wild fish to produce farmed fish. Alaska ranched salmon eat wild fish too and the conversion ratio is far less efficient than farming.

• “higher levels of PCB’s and mercury to be higher in farm-raised fish than wild fish”

The truth – PCB and mercury levels are so low in both wild and farmed salmon that it’s almost undetectable. But, if you really want to know, the highest levels of PCBs have been found in wild Sockeye salmon from Alaska’s Copper River  (Ewald et al. 1998). Levels of mercury are the lowest in farmed salmon.

• “farm-raised fish is pumped full of antibiotics, hormones and even chemicals to change their colour”

Wrong, wrong and…wrong. Hey doc, you kinda suck!  Antibiotics are only used on farm-raised fish when a fish is sick (a guy who prescribes drugs for a living should know this). Hormones are not used and the ‘colour’ that he refers to is the red pigment that colours a salmon’s flesh.  This pigmentation process is the same for wild and farmed salmon – carotenoid pigments are in their feed source and salmon simply retain the red colour (kinda like if we ate a ton of carrots then we’d turn orange).

Dear Dr. Mercola; I guess your uneducated opinion is protected by the disclaimer on your website that says “these statements have not been evaluated…”.  

Idiot.

When it comes to salmon, it’s truly amazing what makes the news. The “Juneau Empire” recently wrote about Wal-Mart jumping on the Alaska seafood marketing blitz – Wal-Mart is selling Alaska salmon from Bristol Bay.

Big friggin’ deal.

And it seems as though bloggers below the article in the Empire agree. ‘al7kz’ comments, “The only thing missing from this article is ‘Paid Advertisenent’ at the top“.  We couldn’t agree more.

The photo above is just another example of the false advertising so prevalent from the Alaska Seafood Marketing Council. When over 40% of the salmon in Alaska are born in hatcheries and bred to out-compete with natural, wild salmon – then it ain’t wild.