Will Farmed Salmon Ever Get A Fair Shake?

The salmon-farming industry has come a long way in recent years to clean up its act. But that won't stop the people, including celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, behind the much-publicized 'Fish Fight' TV program from shining a negative light on the industry when it debuts on January 12, 2011.

Salmon farming is in the news again, as UK Fisheries Minister Richard Beynon is warning of the environmental impact of salmon farming and suggesting that consumers switch to wild alternatives such as gurnard and megrim. Beynon’s comments came in advance of the much-publicized 'Fish Fight' TV program, which debuts on (United Kingdom) Channel 4 on 11 January.

The program comprises a series of films and documentaries by leading chefs, looking at controversial aspects of the seafood industry, including discards, shark finning, tuna fishing/ranching and salmon farming. Advance publicity has made the industry fearful that the program will provide a unbalanced view, particularly of the work over the past few years toward more responsible and sustainable fishing and farming practices.

Celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is tackling the salmon-farming industry and will tell consumers that 3 kilograms of wild fish are required to produce 1 kilogram of farmed salmon and that thousands of tons of Peruvian anchovies are sucked up by factory vessels to be turned into fishmeal to feed them. He paints a negative picture of an industry that has come a long way in recent years to clean up its act. He also fails to mention that the Peruvian anchovy industry is highly regulated and sustainable, and that there is a very limited consumer market for small bony fish.

Come on, Hugh, where did you take your figures from? Were you not perhaps setting out to prove that salmon farming is bad, and therefore used a worse-case scenario?

The International Fishmeal and Fish Oil Organization (IFFO) calculated that salmon has a fish-in-fish-out ratio (FIFO) of 1.68:1, which means that for every ton of whole wild fish used, 0.595 tonnes of salmon is produced. The IFFO also runs a well-subscribed Global Standard for Responsible Supply scheme that guarantees fishmeal originates from a well-managed, sustainable source.

Leading fish-feed manufacturer EWOS has gone a step further, showing that salmon farmers can actually be net producers of protein, using less that 1 kilogram of wild fish to grow 1 kilogram of salmon. EWOS scientists take into account the nutritional values of the fishmeal and fish oil and of the resulting farmed fish, and say this is a more reliable method of assessing the true picture.

Industry standard fish feed in Scotland contains less than 20 percent fishmeal, down from more than 30 percent a few years ago. Feed companies are putting huge resources into researching alternatives to marine ingredients and are reporting success in their endeavours. All of this adds up to a far better picture than will be portrayed to consumers by Fish Fight this week.

The Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organization (SSPO) is furious that Benyon has picked up on Fearnley-Whittingstall’s arguments and attacked an industry worth more than GBP 500 million a year responsible for 6,000 jobs. SSPO CEO Scott Landsburgh said he’s concerned that the minister is so ill-informed and irresponsible.

'Farmed salmon is a healthy, nutritious and sustainable protein,' he told SeafoodSource. 'On average, they use 83 percent less fishmeal and fish oil than would be eaten by salmon growing in the wild. Feed [makers] and fish farmers have highlighted to celebrity chefs the enormous progress achieved to make farmed salmon one of the most efficient farmed livestocks.'

The problem is that salmon farming remains an easy target for the mainstream media, and no one seems capable of looking at the issue in a rational, unbiased manner. It remains to be seen whether consumers buy into any of the Fish Fight messages. Probably not. After all, farmed salmon is the best-selling fresh fish item in the UK, and consumers are notoriously bad at retaining environmental messages, however spurious or true they may be.