Friends Don't Let Friend Eat Farmed Fish

Farmed salmon are gross.

Seriously. Picture huge net ponds partitioned off in bays and inlets where farmed salmon swim around in their own poop. That sounds yummy.

We would like it if you could think twice next time you order salmon from a restaurant or the grocery store. Stop for a second and ask if it is wild or farmed. If you don’t, you could be exposing yourself to harmful toxins and chemicals… and lots of salmon-to-salmon poop.

In 2001, the BBC conducted a groundbreaking study on the adverse quality of farmed versus wild salmon. In this study, researchers concluded that farmed salmon contain a much higher level of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) than wild salmon. What are PCBs? We had no friggin’ clue and had to look that up, and this is what we found.

According to an article by HealthCastle.com: Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are mixtures of up to 209 individual chlorinated compounds (known as congeners). There are no known natural sources of PCBs. PCBs are either oily liquids or solids that are colorless to light yellow. PCBs have been used as coolants and lubricants in transformers, capacitors, and other electrical equipment because they don’t burn easily and are good insulators. The manufacture of PCBs was banned in the U.S. in 1979 because of evidence they build up in the environment and can cause harmful health effects. However, PCBs persist in the environment. Fish absorb PCBs from contaminated sediments and from their food.

Small Salmon Farm Pond

Wow, that sounds disgusting. PCBs are not good for your health, but there are high amounts of PCBs in fishmeal fed to farmed salmon.

CNN recently reported in a story that Chilean farmed salmon contained harmful diseases. Andrea Kavanagh, manager of the Salmon Aquaculture Reform Campaign who is associated with the Pew Environmental Group says, “The group sued the FDA for documents of the agency’s recent inspections of Chilean salmon and found that Chile was using medications and chemicals to raise its salmon that are not approved for use in either the United States or Europe.”

Medications? Chemicals??!! In your seafood.

Sarah Palin says: You Betcha!

Not only are farmed salmon bad for your health, but they hurt our industries and threaten jobs. If everyone ate farmed salmon, we couldn’t have this website. Thumbs down to that option.

This video does a nice job explaining the effects of fish farming. Luckily, no salmon farms exist in Alaska, but they do down the coast in British Columbia, Canada. And guess who buys the BC farmed salmon… you got it: Americans.

We won’t go into the details about how fish farms also kill and harm the aquaculture of the bays and inlets where the ponds are kept. But, we can say that it is pretty sick and nasty business.

So don’t be poopy, support Alaska’s sustainable salmon fisheries and request for wild instead of farmed. Remember, Friends Don’t Let Friends Eat Farmed Salmon.