The only fresh salmon we can get commercially here in Australia is farmed and that’s a problem, as fish will often escape from the sea-cage infecting wild species with all sorts of disease. Farmed salmon are often fed colouring to make their flesh pink instead of its natural grey, which actually isn’t nearly as toxic as the hormones, antibiotics, GMO feed, and other shocking chemicals used in these farms. Most of us know nothing about any of this.
Salmon farming is absolutely disastrous to local fish populations and local environments into which salmon fish farms are placed. Tasmania’s booming salmon farming industry, which trades on a ‘clean, green’ image, isn’t so squeaky clean after all. It’s responsible for the deaths of hundreds of protected native animals, including rare seals, dolphins and seabirds. Also, because the salmon are raised in unnatural, crowded pens, diseases are a big problem, resulting in antibiotics being added to the fish feed. Additionally, farms have used anti-parasitic drugs to kill the sea lice that overpopulate and attach themselves to the salmon in the pens. There are probably any number of chemicals, steroids and drugs in farmed salmon, and not listed on the package, that are a cause for concern.
COLOURING – A lawsuit filed several years ago forced the marketers of farmed salmon to inform consumers that colour is added to make the flesh of the salmon pink rather than gray. The reality is that the chemical used to color the salmon, astaxanthin, is a manufactured copy of the pigment that wild salmon eat in nature, which gives wild salmon their pinkish-red color. Many of us might choose not to consume fish with an added chemical of any type, but this colorant is probably not a big worry to most consumers.
ADDITIVES: The problem is what salmon get in their feed, which causes many toxins to accumulate in their systems, like bisphenol A, (BPA) pthalate esters, dioxins and antibiotics.
The AMCS (Aust Marine Conservation Society) lists Sea-cage farmed Atlantic Salmon as EAT LESS.
WILD ALASKAN SALMON – A better choice. Buy it canned from ‘Fish 4 Ever’ and ‘John West’.
