The only possible reaction is to sag back in your chair dumbfounded. The “Pure Salmon Campaign” is a coalition of salmon farmers that have banded together to accuse the world’s largest salmon farmer, Marine Harvest, of being an uncaring eco-brute…
Most of the really newsworthy sea-lice infestations, mass escapees, and the seven employee deaths, have been the Marine Harvest farms, giving the industry a bad name.
The “Pure Salmon” label caught my eye – and assumed it was a coalition of Ministers from nations with natural real wild salmon populations who were concerned of the impacts of salmon farming operations on their dwindling native stocks.
It wasn’t.
While fish farming is a reality long past any debate, it appears a Harvard Law degree will be necessary to read the grocer’s label.
“Pure” has already been compromised, but will an “Alaskan Salmon” or “Copper River” Salmon, be a fish grown born raised farmed in that state or watershed, or will they leave us a descriptor that differentiates between pellet fed and …
“Following an unknown biological urge, two salmon meet in freshwater, fall in love, painstakingly dig a small nest – filling it with eggs and milt. They’re immediately upside down on the mortgage, filling their remaining days avoiding big hammy felted feet – then die wasted with their progeny inheriting an enormous tax burden causing them to flee to international waters.”
I was thinking “Organic” might be reserved somehow – as “Wild” could describe repeat escapees that are thrown into solitary confinement. Organic has already been tainted and while the various groups decide which chemicals and antibiotics can be shoveled into organic pens – it’s quite certain that most of our former labels will no longer describe what we would call Mother Nature’s brand of wild.
Rather than be incensed, it brings into question what rigors “the real wild” must maintain to distinguish itself from the farmed variant. Both oceans and freshwater serve a steady cocktail of PCB’s, Estrogen, various birth control hormones, stimulants, depressants, and whatever isotopes survive wastewater cleansing – and with that much preamble are they still really fish?
Raised in a pen doesn’t leave many tell tale signs – and as you peruse the fishmarket where “wild” is $25 per pound, and farmed is half that, the unscrupulous is likely to mix the two to maximize profits.
I’m scratching my head just as vigorously as you are. One thing is certain, smack the video remote out of your kid’s hands, as his skills in reading and comprehension will need considerable sharpening to match wits with Madison Ave…
Just read the back of a Hershey with Almonds, when you get to the part that says, “(Milk Chocolate contains ….” – you’ve been savaged.