Most salmon you will ever see is farmed. And that’s just as true of smart restaurants and sushi joints as it is supermarkets and fishmongers, by the way.
People think this salmon is ‘healthy’.
That's understandable, perhaps, given the millions of pounds spent onpromoting it as such.
But the reality behind salmon farming is really rather grim, and for all sorts of reasons:
- the salmon are fed wild-caught fish. It takes more than 1kg of wild caught fish, such as mackerel and herring, to produce 1kg of farmed salmon. Absolutely insane.
- the farms are plagued by parasitic sea lice which disperse and infect wild salmon and sea trout, with devastating consequences.
- the chemicals used on the farms are lethal to other types of sea life – in particular lobsters, crabs and prawns.
- a staggering 8.9 tonnes of antibiotics were used on Scottish salmon farms last year (when you see the conditions, you’ll understand why…)
- Scottish salmon farms dump volumes of untreated waste (including fish faeces) into surrounding waters - equivalent to the same amount of sewage produced by half of the Scottish human population!
It’s an ugly, ugly business.
And it’s why we’re such big fans of WildFish.org and their brilliant #Offthetable campaign.
Because the truth - uncomfortable as it may be - is that no thinking person should really eat farmed salmon.
They’re the battery chickens of the sea.
And why would we eat them, when British waters are teeming with wild fish and wild shellfish that are the envy of the world?
Buy some beautiful, sustainable wild fish on the Wylde Market this coming Wednesday, and do the planet - and yourself - a favour.
Nick
PS – the Wylde Market opens every Wednesday, 7am – 7pm. Delivery is every Friday, before 12pm.