News Coverage
The salmon catch:
Wild vs. farm-raised? PCB threat muddies the water
Published September 10, 2003
Talking about fresh salmon is like comparing automobiles. You've got the VW and the Ferrari. The Chevrolet and the Cadillac.
Of course, there are personal preferences, and you may have a hard time finding your first choice. Then, it's no easy task to know exactly what you are getting.
One local expert says the best and freshest salmon smells exactly like fresh watermelon.
"If I get that, I make all the servers smell it," says Tenny Flynn, chef/owner of GW Fins, a French Quarter restaurant that features more than a dozen varieties of fresh fish on its menu at any given time.
When a salmon is truly fresh, he says, "you can close your eyes and think you have your nose next to a watermelon." The last time that happened to Flynn was with a farm-raised salmon from Ireland.
Irish salmon, an Atlantic variety, is Flynn's favorite farm-raised salmon while California wild salmon is his choice of wild. On Flynn's menu, each salmon is listed with a label of the exact type of fish and is priced accordingly.
Yet, he doesn't sell a lot of salmon.
"I don't think people come to New Orleans to eat salmon," he said.
But what about supermarket salmon, which Flynn refers to as the "Chevrolet."
"It's not bad," he says. "It's inexpensive."
If it's not labeled to your satisfaction, you must rely on the person behind the counter for your information, says Cliff R. Hall, sales director and co-owner of the New Orleans Fish House, a wholesaler that serves many restaurants and markets in New Orleans.
"You've got your VWs and your Ferraris," Hall says, the VWs being chum and pink, the Ferraris, varieties of wild Pacific salmon including the Copper River king from Alaska. In between are a lot of choices, many of them good farm-raised salmon from both East and West coasts.
Most salmon available here in both restaurants and stores are farm-raised Atlantic varieties, says Hall, although wild salmon is frequently available at restaurants that specialize in fish and at Whole Foods Market, which sells only wild salmon and salmon that is farmed with no antibiotics, meat-based feed or hormones.
Phillip Gemus, seafood team leader at the Uptown Whole Foods, says the store has wild salmon in summer and fall and now features three types from Pacific waters -- coho from Alaska, and king and sockeye from the Washington state-Oregon area. He also sells Atlantic farm-raised, which at $8.99 a pound is several dollars below wild in cost.
What of recent reports that farm-raised salmon are laced with higher levels of toxic PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) than wild varieties?
According to Gemus, trimming the fat where PCBs hide, and grilling or broiling the salmon so that the fat runs out, will decrease PCBs, which are chemicals formerly used by industry but banned in the United States decades ago. Some still left in the environment can be drawn to fatty substances. PCBs have been linked to cancer as well as to damage of the nervous, reproductive and immune systems.
A month-old report by the watchdog Environmental Working Group said it tested 10 samples of farmed salmon bought in the United States and found seven contained 16 times the level of toxicity found in wild salmon. (Budget-priced farmed salmon now makes up 80 percent of fresh salmon sold.)
Hank Steinman of Martin International, a Boston-based major wholesale supplier of salmon to the New Orleans Fish House, said, "I think the consumer can feel very confident that the salmon they are getting in New Orleans is as high a quality of salmon as any place in the United States."
As for PCBs, he says the recent study was not representative and that he is not aware of any incidence of a rejection by the Food and Drug Administration of salmon for high levels of PCBs.
"Every pound of fresh salmon imported to the United States is subject to inspection by the FDA, a responsible unbiased agency in protecting the well being of American consumers," Steinman said.
Like GW Fins, many restaurants in the Pacific Northwest put both farm-raised and wild salmon on their menus, labeling them and charging accordingly. Rob Clark, executive chef of C Restaurant in Vancouver, is a strong supporter of wild salmon and puts five kinds on his menu.
"One isn't better than the other," he told the Association of Food Writers at a conference last year. "I'd just as soon have pink as sockeye . . . I want different tastes." Although he doesn't eat farm-raised, he serves it to those who do. "Some would prefer farm-raised as they would prefer Cheese Whiz over gorgonzola," he said.
Geoffrey Howes, director of operations of The Salmon House restaurant in Vancouver, puts both on his menu and compares it to serving different kinds of steaks -- filet, sirloin or ribeye. "We treat salmon the same," he said.
The five varieties of Pacific wild salmon are king (considered the best and also called spring or chinook), sockeye, coho, chum and pink.
Salmon farming has become a major industry on both Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and some Atlantic varieties are being farmed in Pacific waters, much to the chagrin of many purists.
There are good and bad farmers, says Vivian Krouse, a representative of the British Columbia Salmon Association, which represents them. Some are poor operators, she says, while the good ones take environmental issues seriously.
Most are raised in large cages 85 feet deep with an average of a half million fish. The farms require daily monitoring of algae, and it takes two years to grow the fish -- nine months in a fresh-water hatchery and 16 to 23 months in salt water. The fish are dipped up and kept alive until they reach the processing plants and go from a live state to being filleted within 10 minutes. The vast majority is sold fresh, whereas much of the wild harvest is canned or frozen because of limited seasons and amount of fish caught.
In the Pacific Northwest where salmon is a major industry, the pros and cons for wild vs. farmed are continuously debated. Wild salmon advocates say fish farmed in pens spread disease and parasites and that they are given drugs that pollute the marine environment. Farmers, however, argue they are not hurting the environment, that their techniques are sophisticated and safe.
Hall thinks the more important issue is the handling of salmon once it arrives in restaurants and markets and how long it is stored at the retail level. His best tip is to know your vendor, chef or butcher and ask questions when in doubt.
Because Louisiana is home to many delicious varieties of fish, the nationally popular salmon has great competition here. In fact, some restaurants that specialize in seafood do not feature it regularly.
"We do it on a 'visiting fish' menu," said Gregg Collier, executive chef of Red Fish Grill.
When Collier decides to offer salmon, he likes a Norwegian Atlantic variety. But the restaurant basically sticks to the fresh local fish.