The Mad Cow scare hasn't changed my eating habits any. As it is, I only eat beef about once or twice
a month. And I'm not going to stop eating beef now either, it's healthy and I love the taste. But I
used to eat beef every day, until a decade ago, when Mad Cow disease was first discovered in Europe.
I've been cautious ever since. In the back of my mind, I've always suspected that it already exists
in the U.S., but isn't being reported.
What I do eat a lot of, though, is sea food, especially salmon. Studies show that people who eat
fish twice a week are about half as likely to get stricken by heart attacks or strokes.
A couple of decades ago, most salmons were caught in the wild, but today, most of them are bred in
farms. And these factory/farm bred salmons, just like the factory/farm bred cows, are not as
healthy to eat.
The answer, ofcourse, is more government regulations to ensure safe foods. At the very least,
there should be truth in labeling, we should be able to know, when we buy our food, how and where
it was made.
Farmed salmon is up to 8 times more toxic than salmon caught in the wild, due to the fact that they
are fed concentrated feed, made from smaller fish that also contain pollutants, and also due to city
pollutions and farm run offs. Here's an excellent article that documents it, I especially like the
last paragraph, because it says it all.
Abel Malcolm mediawhoresonline.commediawhoresonline.comOpen ↗
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Toxic risks in farmed salmon -- consumers told to be wary
Study finds PCBs, dioxins, pesticides, probably from diet
Jane Kay, Chronicle Environment Writer
Friday, January 9, 2004
URL: sfgate.com/article.cgi?file=3D/chronicle/archive/2004/01/09/MNG6C46KRV1.DT= L
Farmed salmon, raised in pens worldwide and a staple of the American diet, contain 10 times the
level of dangerous chemicals found in wild Pacific salmon, a study concluded Thursday.
Levels of the contaminants studied -- PCBs, dioxins and two banned pesticides -- differed
significantly between the farmed and wild salmon primarily because of their diets, according to the
new findings, which appear in the latest issue of the journal Science.
The study is the first large-scale attempt to evaluate the safety of farmed as compared with wild-
caught salmon. Consumption of all salmon has jumped about 25 percent in the United States since the
late 1980s.
Wild salmon eat plants, krill, shrimp, anchovies and smaller fish, and migrate thousands of miles in
the ocean, away from polluted city and farm runoff. Farmed salmon are fed a concentrated feed high
in fish oils and fish meal made from smaller fish that may contain pollutants.
Salmon, a relatively oily, fatty fish, can accumulate the PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls,
dioxins and pesticides from the feed, and can also ingest them as they grow in enclosed net pens in
coastal areas and estuaries.
Researchers emphasized the health benefits of eating fish, including salmon, and said that the
health risks of consuming toxic chemicals at levels contained in farm-raised fish have not been
thoroughly documented. Still, the scientists warned consumers to be choosy.
"Even the cleanest of the farmed salmon shouldn't be eaten more than once or twice a month'' based
on fish safety guidelines developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for PCBs, said lead
author Dr. David Carpenter, a physician and expert on environmental contaminants and human health.
"We're certainly not telling people not to eat salmon. We're trying to tell people what fish are
healthy to eat. Wild salmon -- both fresh, frozen and canned -- is very safe,'' he said.
The PCBs in farmed salmon were found at levels two to 10 times higher than in other meat sources in
the food supply, said Carpenter, former public health dean at the University at Albany and member of
a National Academy of Sciences committee on dioxin-like compounds in the food supply.
PCBs and dioxins are potent toxicants that can cause cancer and damage neurological systems in
humans and other animals.
Officials at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which regulates most contaminants in food,
countered the advice of the study's authors.
"We don't have a public health concern on what we've seen here (in the study),'' said Terry Troxell,
head of the FDA's office of plants, dairy foods and beverages.
"Our advice to consumers is not to alter consumption of farmed or wild salmon or other fish. Salmon
is an excellent source of high-quality protein and omega-3 fatty acids, and there is evidence that
fish consumption is protective against cardiovascular disease,'' he said.
The FDA doesn't consider fish adulterated for PCBs unless it exceeds 2, 000 parts per billion, a
tolerance established 20 years ago. It's 40 times looser than the Environmental Protection Agency's
fish safety guideline.
Representatives of the farmed salmon industry said government regulators and the industry already
knew of the chemical levels found in farmed fish.
Alex Trent, a spokesman for the Salmon of the Americas trade group, criticized the authors for
scaring away people from eating healthful salmon.
The $2.4 million study, financed by the Pew Charitable Trust, was conducted by researchers at four
universities, including Cornell University and the University of Indiana at Bloomington, and an
analytical lab.
The researchers examined 700 fish for 50 chemicals, and focused on PCBs, once used in transformers;
dioxins, a product of combustion; and the banned pesticides dieldrin and toxaphene. Mercury wasn't
included because it doesn't accumulate in salmon at worrisome levels.
Researchers bought farmed Atlantic salmon from eight major producing regions and fillets in 16 large
cities in Europe and North America, including San Francisco. They tested feed from two companies
that serve 80 percent of the global market.
For comparison, five wild species of Pacific salmon -- chum, Chinook, coho, pink and sockeye -- were
obtained from three different regions. Wild Atlantic salmon weren't studied because few are
available commercially. Nor were farmed Pacific salmon studied because they aren't raised in
significant numbers.
The average PCB level in farmed salmon was 37 parts per billion, compared with the average level of
4.8 parts per billion in wild salmon. Overall, combining all the chemicals, levels measured more
than ten times as high as in farmed fish.
The EPA says 50 parts per billion equals one extra cancer case among 100, 000 people, and recommends
a limit of one meal a month.
The most-contaminated farmed salmon came from Northern Europe, followed by Canada, Maine, Chile and
Washington state
The most-contaminated fillets of farmed salmon came from supermarkets in San Francisco; Boston;
Frankfurt, Germany; Edinburgh, Scotland; Paris; London; and Oslo, Norway.
The findings come at a time when the growing popularity of the lower- priced farmed salmon is
threatening the Pacific Northwest wild-salmon fisheries. In San Francisco, fishmongers are selling
wild Columbia River salmon for $6.99 a pound and farmed salmon for $5.99 a pound.
Commercial fishermen caught more than 99 percent of the salmon consumed worldwide in 1980, says a
Stanford University study. Today, they supply about 40 percent of the total salmon sales.
The fishermen and environment groups warn that the millions of escaped farm fish in British Columbia
and elsewhere threaten the genetic purity of native salmon runs, spread diseases and use up four
pounds of live fish to produce one pound of salmon.
"Maybe we can wake up the American consumer about what they're eating. Eat grass-fed beef, wild
salmon and organic produce, by God,'' said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast
Federation of Fishermen's Associations.
E-mail Jane Kay at [email hidden]. sfgate.comcgiOpen ↗
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