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Wild Alaska salmon isn't as pure as advertised
05/18/04
By Don Whiteley
Commercial greed and gross mismanagement by government agencies have combined to destroy or diminish wild fish stocks all over the globe, including the West Coast salmon fishery.
With that in mind, one can only marvel at the success of the environment movement, and others, for convincing people that it is more ecologically responsible to kill and eat a wild Chinook salmon than a farmed Atlantic salmon raised in a pen.
Carried to its logical, and absurd, conclusion, we should also demand an end to all chicken farms and cattle ranches so we can go back to eating deer, moose and wild pheasant -- all in the name of ecology, of course.
The latest knock against B.C.'s beleaguered salmon farmers came last week in the annual marketing push for Alaska's fabled Copper River salmon. Alaska Airlines signed a partnership agreement with Alaska's Nor-Quest Seafoods and New England's Legal Seafoods to provide, initially, two to three tons of fresh salmon a week. Legal has 30 family restaurants on the Eastern seaboard, fish markets, a catering business, and sells fish on the Internet.
Tied to this is a big marketing splash with promotional blitzes in Washington, Boston, New York -- the whole nine yards. In an interview with the Alaska Journal of Commerce, Roger Berkowitz, president of Nor-Quest, said this:
"We are going to try and wean people off the farmed and onto the wild. I am a firm believer in wild product. Alaska wild salmon is the purest, most healthy and most environmentally sustainable -- in short, the best there is."
Well, not quite. The purity of the wild Alaska salmon is based more on myth than reality, as it is subject to the same environmental pressures, and water-borne contaminants, as other wild salmon stocks up and down the West Coast.
And while Alaskans look down their noses at salmon farming (it's not allowed), they encourage salmon ranching -- a variation on salmon farming that sees fish raised in pens until they are big enough to fend for themselves, and then let go into the wild.
The creme de la creme of Alaskan wild salmon is the Copper River run, and every year its arrival on the market in May is greeted with the same enthusiasm and hoopla applied to the arrival of Beaujolais wine from France.
But guess what -- it's laced with PCBs. I feel safe in using the word "laced" because the same word was used over and over again in the media to describe the 32 parts per billion of PCBs detected in B.C. farmed salmon in a study released last January. But an independent study conducted in 1998 on behalf of the Circumpolar Conservation Union showed Copper River salmon with PCB levels exceeding 60 parts per billion -- nearly twice as "laced" as the farmed salmon rate. Has it improved since 1998? Maybe. But maybe it got worse.
That's not the only wild salmon run discovered to have higher levels of PCBs than farmed salmon. Similar results came out of a study of Puget Sound salmon, where wild Chinook salmon were found to have PCB levels equal to, and sometimes higher than, farmed salmon.
All these salmon tested at PCB levels well below the 2,000 parts per billion considered the maximum allowable before the fish is considered a health problem -- but I wonder if these stats are spelled out in Alaska's marketing blitz? And if PCBs are a good reason not to eat farmed salmon, then they are twice as good a reason not to eat Copper River salmon.
Salmon farming vs. salmon ranching is another interesting issue that likely doesn't make its way into the "wild is good, farmed is bad" marketing campaign. In order to help maintain its commercial fishery, and enhance wild fish stocks, Alaska decided to forego the salmon farming route and do salmon ranching instead.
Salmon ranching is a lot like salmon farming. Fish are raised in ocean-based pens, fed a steady diet of processed food (purchased in B.C., interestingly enough, and consumed at nearly six times the rate used in B.C. fish-farm operations), fed some dyes important to their health and colour, also antibiotics. When they're big enough, they let them go.
Alaska releases more than 1.5 Billion "ranched" fish into the waters every year, and they happily swim away, competing for food with their natural-born cousins, and eventually get caught (along with the wild fish) in the commercial fishery. About 25 per cent of the catch comes from hatchery fish. This program, along with other aspects of Alaska's fisheries management, has been certified as okay by the international Marine Stewardship Council.
But the Alaska chapter of U.S. conservation organization Trout Unlimited in 2002 released a cutting critique of the MSC's glowing endorsement, saying "an evaluation that finds no significant weaknesses in organizational structure and performance invites a skeptical, even cynical, reception."
And about Alaskan salmon ranching, Trout Unlimited had some scathing remarks on the practice's impact on diversity in wild fish stocks, particularly the opportunity for genetic dilution as hatchery fish head for the spawning beds.
"The fact that the [Alaska] Department of Fish and Game not only insists that concerns about the impact of hatchery fish on wild populations are paranoiac, but also has authorized increased hatchery production and is financially subsidizing that production, belies the certification of management for sustainability.
"From the perspective of conservation of wild salmon biodiversity, there is no biological justification for releasing 1.6 billion hatchery juveniles annually into Alaska waters."
In the debate between farmed and wild fish, none of this is considered when a restaurateur has to decide which fish to put on his menu. The customer asks one question: "Is it wild or is it farmed?" and makes a decision based on emotion rather than fact. B.C. salmon farmers are losing market share as a result of this.
All's fair in love and marketing. But the facts don't give Alaska an advantage in this argument, and Alaska's holier-than-thou attitude to the issue is quite annoying.
And to all those New Englanders happily chowing down on Alaska "wild" Copper River salmon -- enjoy your PCBs.
don_whiteley@telus.net
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