Food writers out to lunch
As an example, today Ms. Ali Rosen- apparently the Founder and Host of a company called Potluck Video- posted a video in the Huffington Post which was accompanied by some text that included the following statement: “Buying a fish at the fish counter in a grocery store is so disconnected from the reality, that it's often hard to imagine why a wild Alaskan salmon might be so much more expensive than a similar looking farmed salmon”. While this is a totally misleading statement, Ms. Rosen provides evidence of this fact in a following text: “Higher end suppliers pride themselves on having the fish on a plane and onto your plate within 24 hours. For the majority, since it is seasonal, most year-round salmon is frozen”.
While a small portion of the seasonally caught “wild” salmon- many of which come from hatcheries and net-pen operations in Alaska and British Columbia- are sold as fresh products, most if not all farmed salmon is sold fresh and available year-round. In fairness, the article provided as background for Ms. Rosen’s video, she acknowledges that “Fishermen in Alaska are quick to point out that farmed salmon brings fish to the masses and as such has done a lot of good”. But she can’t resist throwing in a final jab against farmed salmon: “But for the real deal, there's just nothing like a true wild salmon”.
Like so many other “food experts”, Ms. Rosen fails to explain what kind of Alaskan salmon she is talking about- there are five kinds of them. And as Ms. Laine Welch of the Alaskan Homer Tribune writes this week, the harvest of salmon in Alaska is heading for a record this year- most of them (over 80%) of the pink or “humpback” species: ”The statewide catch on Sept. 6 was nearing 265 million fish; the old record was 222 million in 2005. A bumper run of pink salmon is behind the big harvest; the mind-boggling catch was approaching 213 million fish. The previous record was 161 million pinks, also in 2005”.
Fast forward to two supermarkets in British Columbia; Today the Campbell River Superstore advertised fresh, pink salmon (head-off) at a price of CAD$ 1.48 per pound (CAD$ 3.26 or €2.37 per kilo)- see picture. Earlier this year, FishfarmingXpert visited the Osaka supermarket in Vancouver, where fresh, farmed Atlantic salmon was on sale for CAD$ 19.82 (~€14.43) per kilo for salmon steaks, and CAD$26.43 (~€19.25) for fillets. Granted the cost of further processing and removal of bones would add further value, but not enough to justify Ms. Rosen’s suggestion that “Alaskan salmon might be so much more expensive than farmed salmon”.
