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In
the same way that is impossible to compare free-range beef
or un-caged chicken with feedlot-penned, industrially produced
livestock, it is impossible to compare the firm, resilient
texture of wild salmon flesh with the flesh of farmed salmon.
Wild salmon undertake a phenomenal 1200 to 1500 to sometimes
2000-mile journey, from freshwater lakes and pools that serve
as nurseries to distant Pacific and Arctic salt waters. The
taste, natural oils, and muscular tone that wild salmon develop
on this journey make wild sockeye incomparable to penned fish.
Although sockeye salmon are never farmed commercially, because
they have proven practically impossible to spawn in controlled
situations; other varieties of salmon have been increasingly
farmed over the past 15 years. Farmed salmon have given rise
to a number of environmental and health concerns-particularly
the tendency of fish farms to disrupt local ecosystems and
the dangerous levels of PCBs found in farmed salmon.
A
study published in a 2004 issue of Science, a leading scientific
journal, concluded that PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls-a
persistent chemical compound common to industrial waste) are
harmfully concentrated in farmed salmon. Farmed salmon are
normally fed a meal composed of mulched feeder fish, a meal
that has been found to be high in PCBs. Individual feeder
fish accrue minute amounts of PCBs that become harmfully concentrated
when fish meal is prepared. According to a year 2000 report
by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, PCBs
are "reasonably expected" to cause cancer.
Equally
concerning is the tendency of fish farms to foul local ecosystems.
Fish farms unnaturally concentrate migratory fish in a very
small area. This concentration dirties the area with the feces
of thousands of caged fish, an area unequipped to break down
such an accumulation. Additionally, these penned fish tend
to steal food that belongs to indigenous fish, disrupting
the local food chain. The reverberation of these disruptions
often destroys healthy, local ecologies.
The
bottom line is simple: stay away from farmed salmon, and,
always ask, "Is it wild?"
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