It's actually a bit old news now, with the Washington Post article appearing online Sep. 24, 2013, but thought I would share it here.
I know I've heard people on this forum say things before about taste differences and fillet quality. Well, in this article, a Chef from one of Wolfgang Puck's restaurants prepared in identical fashion, 10 different types of wild and farmed salmon. The blind taste testers were chefs, food critics, and seafood industry representatives. The fish that came out on top? Costco frozen Norwegian farmed Atlantic salmon. In fact the top 5 salmon were all farmed Atlantic salmon.
It's a very good article, not just on the taste and food quality, but explains much of the innovation that has taken place in the farmed salmon industry, even mentioning the positive impact that farmed salmon has had on the wild caught salmon industry.
I've amended the title of this thread from the WaPo editorial title, as it's clear that farmed salmon is already a viable alternative to wild.
For some though, this issue is already made up in their minds. BC particularly, is probably the toughest venue for farming salmon in the World. Recently Alexandra Morton and her crew made some news with PRV (a virus that has been implicated in salmon deaths) studies, after their infectious salmon anemia scare was shown to be nothing but a scare. However, the virus is also found in healthy fish.
It will come to light shortly, that imported salmon in BC most likely did not bring PRV to Canadian waters. There are historical samples which have been stored at -80°C, and the first imports of salmon from Norway to BC have now been tested. They were negative for PRV. The very next year, samples of the same fish are positive for the virus. That indicates that the virus was very likely already here, before imports began.
Anyways, that's probably too much information already, the tl;dr version is:
Salmon farming is good, here's why
I know I've heard people on this forum say things before about taste differences and fillet quality. Well, in this article, a Chef from one of Wolfgang Puck's restaurants prepared in identical fashion, 10 different types of wild and farmed salmon. The blind taste testers were chefs, food critics, and seafood industry representatives. The fish that came out on top? Costco frozen Norwegian farmed Atlantic salmon. In fact the top 5 salmon were all farmed Atlantic salmon.
It's a very good article, not just on the taste and food quality, but explains much of the innovation that has taken place in the farmed salmon industry, even mentioning the positive impact that farmed salmon has had on the wild caught salmon industry.
I've amended the title of this thread from the WaPo editorial title, as it's clear that farmed salmon is already a viable alternative to wild.
For some though, this issue is already made up in their minds. BC particularly, is probably the toughest venue for farming salmon in the World. Recently Alexandra Morton and her crew made some news with PRV (a virus that has been implicated in salmon deaths) studies, after their infectious salmon anemia scare was shown to be nothing but a scare. However, the virus is also found in healthy fish.
It will come to light shortly, that imported salmon in BC most likely did not bring PRV to Canadian waters. There are historical samples which have been stored at -80°C, and the first imports of salmon from Norway to BC have now been tested. They were negative for PRV. The very next year, samples of the same fish are positive for the virus. That indicates that the virus was very likely already here, before imports began.
Anyways, that's probably too much information already, the tl;dr version is:
Salmon farming is good, here's why