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Consumers Demand Sustainable Fish Choices When Grocery Shopping
Waterkeeper Organizations Stand Up for Pacific Salmon
What people don’t know about farmed salmon can hurt them, not to mention salmon, seals, and other marine wildlife. “That innocuous piece of salmon on your plate has a sordid history,” said Lauren Hornor of Fraser Riverkeeper in British Columbia, co-creator of the SUPS campaign. “As citizens of the Pacific coast, we’re concerned about the impact our buying choices have on wild salmon.”
The group Fraser Riverkeeper is one of over twenty Waterkeeper organizations from Alaska to California that announced the launch of the Stand Up for Pacific Salmon (SUPS) campaign in their watersheds. Using a cartoon, a documentary film, and informational pamphlets, the groups are educating West Coast consumers about the impact of purchasing net-pen farmed salmon — and calling on the “Big Six” grocery retailers to remove the product from their shelves.
“Many people who care about the oceans and their own health have thought choosing farmed salmon was a sustainable and wise choice, but this is definitely not the case,” said Hornor. “Net-pen salmon farms are floating feedlots that have spread sea-lice, pollution, chemicals, and infectious diseases into pristine habitats all around the world, including British Columbia and Washington, and are having a devastating impact on wild salmon stocks.”
The SUPS campaign asks customers of Costco, Safeway, Tesco, Kroger, SuperValu, and Trader Joe’s to follow the example of their fellow retailer Target. In January the discount chain, on the advice of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s SeafoodWatch program, dropped net-pen salmon from over 1,700 stores. “Consumers can turn the industry around, promoting major reform by voting with their wallets,” said Hornor. “This would not only help our oceans and wild salmon, it would lessen risks to human health.”
“Reforming the industry has been like trying to get tobacco companies to admit that cigarettes cause cancer,” says Tyee Bridge, co-creator of the SUPS program and a member of the BC-based volunteer group Wild Salmon Circle. “At one point the salmon farmers even hired the same PR agency used by Big Tobacco. They seem capable of doing anything to make consumers believe their product is sustainable, except actually becoming more sustainable by moving to closed-tank systems.”
Because of the presence of PCBs and other substances, the journal Environmental Research recommends that farmed salmon should be eaten no more than “between 0.4 and 1 meal per month.” This confirmed a similar 2005 study in the Journal of Nutrition, recommending that pregnant women, children, and nursing mothers avoid farmed salmon because of high levels of pollutants.
Other concerns for consumers include the industry’s use of antibiotics and artificial coloring. “The truth about net-pen salmon is outrageous, and not all that appetizing,” said Bridge. “Without the orange and pink dyes put into their feed, for instance, farmed salmon flesh would be an unappealing shade of gray.”
