Fish Food for Thought

by Barbara Murray, October 14th, 2008, 7:00 am

Fish is a healthful food and we should eat more of it. With apologies to Mrs. Paul, one tires of fish sticks (hopefully by fifth grade) and (sorry, Charlie) tuna-salad sandwiches can be an odoriferous embarrassment in the old brown bag.

All grown up now and wanting to expand one’s eating horizons, as well as improve one’s diet, one discovers salmon. Not that ghastly sticky stuff that comes in cans. No, the real thing: fresh salmon, deep pinky-red with gleaming silvery skin, nestled in a bed of crushed ice in the fish case at the local emporium.

There are two sources for those thick-cut fish steaks you intend to sear on the barbecue tonight. There are wild salmon and farm-raised salmon. There is also the nebulous category of organic salmon.

But back to the fish case, where the spectre of PCBs and other contaminants cause you a queasy, pre-piscatorial-purchase pause. The tree hugger in you knows that organic is the best choice health-wise. But unlike beef and chicken and other land-based animals that are sold under the organic label, there are no USDA rules or regulations governing the production and sale or even a definition of organic salmon.

The problem with calling salmon organic arises right off the bat with what they feed on. In order to be labeled organic, meat and poultry producers must use no chemical pesticides or fertilizers in the animals’ feed, and use no of hormones or antibiotics on the fish itself. Salmon are carnivores. Wild salmon eat other fish. No control there. Farmed salmon are given fishmeal, which is produced from wild fish stocks. Still no control.

However, this hasn’t stopped the fishing industry from trying to label salmon. Some producers say their fish are “natural.” One hopes they are using some sort of stringent farming methods in order to offer consumers a healthier product. This is not an official “certified organic” label, mind you. There is no such label. Fish farmers are betting on (and abetting) consumer confusion.

Have I mentioned money? There are big bucks to be made in salmon production — and considerably more of it if the fish one sells can command top prices. An official USDA organic certification and the cachet that comes with it would allow over-the-top pricing.

Alaska is the nexus of the US salmon industry. And Alaska’s senior senator, Ted “Bridge to Nowhere” Stevens, has tried mightily to have wild salmon automatically certified organic. But the Republican senator is in deeply polluted waters himself these days, being on trial as he is for corruption, some of it involving, (“Holy Salmon Steaks, Batman!”), the Alaskan fishing industry.

Here’s the thing, Sen. Stevens et al., wild salmon, though it is an excellent dining choice, is unlikely to ever qualify for the organic label because wild salmon themselves (and for that matter, farm-raised salmon) are not raised in controlled, and therefore certifiable, environments.