Issues

Organic Salmon?

Organic salmon? Chefs, retailers and seafood companies are trying to capitalize on the organic trend by selling "organic" salmon. Don't be fooled. There is no such thing. The USDA has not yet issued regulations on organic seafood. More...

The Problem with Salmon Aquaculture

Our oceans are in trouble. Uncontrolled fishing has brought many species to the brink of extinction, while pollution from farms, cities, and factories is making other commercially important seafood unsafe to eat. More...

Waste Contamination From Salmon Farms

Tens of thousands of farmed salmon confined to net pens produce a huge amount of waste: chemical, biological, organic, and inorganic. For more than 25 years, researchers around the world have recognized the harm from salmon farm waste and its long-term impacts on water quality, fisheries resources, and sea-bed ecology. More...

Labor Practices in the Farmed Salmon Industry

The global boom in demand for seafood, especially salmon, has induced companies, many from Europe, to open salmon farming operations in parts of the world where labor costs are low and environmental regulations are few. While this tactic has produced profits for multinational companies, it has led to worker abuse and highly questionable practices. Moreover, mechanization of operations on factory salmon farms to boost production has destroyed jobs in the commercial fishing industry as a whole. More...

Feeding Farmed Salmon

Industrialized salmon farming relies on a deeply flawed assumption that agricultural practices for animals can be applied to carnivorous fish. In terms of the marine food chain, farming salmon is roughly analogous to raising tigers for meat: Both approaches are inherently unsustainable. More...

Environmental Damage From Escaped Farmed Salmon

The escape of millions of salmon from enormous net pens every year has drastically altered marine environments, coastal rivers, and associated food chains around the world. These fugitive fish pose a new and little understood form of environmental pollution. More...

Diseases and Parasites in Farmed Salmon

Salmon farms are ideal incubators for parasites and infectious diseases that are then spread to adjacent farms and to wild fish. These outbreaks are impossible to quarantine; mass escapes from salmon farms and the normal flow of tides and currents spread diseases and parasites to other fish over very wide areas. More...

Farmed Salmon and Human Health

In 1999, the World Health Organization raised food safety concerns over fish farming, including salmon, warning that this growing practice posed risks to public health. Artificial coloring, toxic by-products, and cancer-causing contaminants have all been found in factory farmed salmon. More...

Salmon Farming Harms Other Marine Life

Hundreds of thousands of factory farmed salmon, packed together in sea cages, inevitably attract natural predators. To deter them, salmon farmers employ four methods: steel nets around and above cages, acoustic devices, shooting, and even plastic models of killer whales. All of these take their toll on birds, seals, porpoises, and other marine mammals. More...

Closed Containment

Closed containers, including fiberglass, cement tanks, and heavy gage plasticized bags, physically separate fish from the external environment. The container's impermeable barrier prevents the transmission of diseases and parasites. It can eliminate escapes and discharges of wastes into the ocean. More...