Farmed Salmon – The most toxic food you can put on your dinner table

Food tests reveal that farmed salmon is one of the most toxic foods in the world, having more in common with junk food than health food!

Salmon is the most popular fish in the west - Americans alone eat nearly 450,000 tons per year - and there is an agony of choice: farmed Atlantic, wild-caught sockeye, king, pink, smoked.

Some are green-certified, others are labeled ‘all-natural’. How do we choose? And can you trust that your purchases will deliver on the promise of protecting wild species and safeguarding your health?

Read on to find out more…

Fish are essential elements of marine ecosystems and also of the human diet. Unfortunately, overfishing has depleted many fish stocks. The proposed solution of fish farming has created more problems than solutions.

You may have been given the impression that eating farmed salmon is good for the environment. Their farming reduces pressures on wild populations and protects other wildlife from being caught as bycatch in fishing nets.

But environmental groups have compared salmon aquaculture facilities to floating pig farms for their high rates of pollution, disease outbreaks, antibiotic use, and infestations of sea lice, marine parasites that feed on the flesh and blood of their fish hosts, causing injury and stress.

Not only are fish farms polluting the aquatic environment and spreading diseases to wild fish, but farmed fish are also an inferior food source, due to fewer healthy nutrients, and because of more toxins, which have accumulated in their fat cells.

Food testing reveals farmed salmon is one of the most toxic foods in the world, having more in common with junk food than health food.

A 2004 study found 13 persistent organic pollutants in the flesh of the fish. Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) concentrations in farmed salmon was around eight times higher than in wild salmon. PCB’s are classified as carcinogenic. As such, its consumption may pose health risks that nullify and benefits of fish consumption.

PCBs can cause various adverse health conditions, including cancer, immunosuppression, neurotoxicity and reproductive and developmental toxicity. Contaminated fish is our most common source of PCB exposure, from accumulated chemicals in the fat tissue.

A 2011 study found farmed salmon consumption can cause insulin resistance, glucose intolerance and obesity in mammals, thanks to the persistent organic pollutants (POPs) found in farmed fish.

In 2018, researchers warned that farmed salmon may also contain polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). These are toxic POPs that have been restricted or banned because of their adverse impacts on child development. PBDEs are a class of chemicals that used to be used as flame retardants, and remain persistent in the marine environment. China, Thailand and Vietnam – countries that process electronic waste - have higher levels of PBDEs in their waters.

Health risks associated with these chemicals, including PBDEs, include infertility, birth defects, neuro-developmental delays, reduced IQ, hormone disruptions and cancer.

So, in this case, not only are you what you eat, but you are also what your food eats. And in the case of farmed salmon, you are eating a dangerous cocktail of toxins!

It is for this that you really need to know the source of the animals’ feed to be sure you are not inadvertently poisoning yourself. In the case of farmed fish, the main sources of poison intake are the toxins in the fish feed and the concentrations of the chemicals in the waters they swim around in.

Fish farming operations may import their feed from lesser regulated fish food manufacturers. One of the main ingredients in farmed salmon feed is fatty fish such as eel. Eel has high protein and fat content. The problem is that many toxins readily bind to fat. The less scrupulous segments of the fish feed industry often use fish deemed unfit for human consumption due to elevated toxicity.

As you might expect, when the fish used in fish feed contain toxic levels of pollutants, they get incorporated into the feed pellets which is then fed to farmed salmon. And then to us humans!

One significant source of fish for farmed salmon feed is the Baltic Sea, infamous for its elevated pollution levels. Nine industrialized countries dump their toxic waste into this closed body of water, which has rendered fish from the Baltic Sea largely inedible. In Sweden, fish mongers are actually legally required to warn patrons about the potential toxicity of Baltic fish.

The fish feed manufacturing process is also an origin of the toxicity. The fatty fish are first cooked, resulting in protein meal and oil. While the oil has high levels of dioxins and PCBs, a chemical called ethoxyquin is also added to the protein powder as an antioxidant, further adding to the toxicity of the final product.

Ethoxyquin, developed as a pesticide by Monsanto in the 1950s, is one of the best kept secrets of the fish food industry - and one of the most toxic.

Its use as a pesticide is strictly regulated on fruits, vegetables and in meat, but not in fish, because it was never intended for such use. It is used in fish feed to prevent the fats from oxidizing and going rancid. But certain fish feed manufacturers never informed health authorities they were using it to preservative fish meal. As a result, its presence in farmed fish was never addressed or regulated.

Disturbingly, farmed fish can contain levels of ethoxyquin that are up to 20 times higher than the level allowed in fruits, vegetables and meats. The effects of this chemical on human health have never been established. So, it is anyone’s guess really…

Aside from toxins already mentioned above, such as PCBs, PBDEs and other POPs, researchers have also found a long line of pesticides - including the long-banned DDT - at concerning levels in fish off the coast of the USA.

And despite the 40-year old Clean Water Act, there are areas of the U.S. where the water is so contaminated with mercury that residents are warned against eating any locally caught fish.

Farmed salmon is also nutritionally less desirable than wild, which is related to its toxicity. One significant nutritional difference is the fat content. Wild salmon contains about 5-7% fat, whereas the farmed variety contains anywhere from 14.5-34%.

This elevated fat content is a direct result of the processed high-fat feed that farmed salmon are given. As the farmed fish is fatter, it also bioaccumulates higher amounts of toxins.

But farmed salmon doesn’t just contain more fat overall prevent the fats from oxidising and going rancid. Another nutritional anomaly is its unbalanced ratios of omega-3 to omega-6 fats. Half a fillet of wild Atlantic salmon contains about 3,996mg of omega-3 and 341mg of omega-6.

Half a fillet of farmed salmon from the Atlantic contains just a bit more omega-3 (4,961mg), but an amazing 1,944mg of omega-6. That is more than 5.5 times more than wild salmon.

While you need both omega-3 and omega-6 fats, the ratio between the two is important and should ideally be about 1-to-1. A standard ‘Western’ diet is already heavily skewed toward omega-6, due to the prevalence of heavily processed foods. Farmed salmon further exacerbates the imbalance, instead of correcting it.

Some of the most common ingredients in farmed fish feed include soybeans, rapeseed/canola oil, sunflower meal and oil, corn gluten meal from corn grains, wheat gluten, pulses (dry, edible seeds of field peas and fava beans), palm oil and peanut meal and oil. Absolutely none of these food items are natural wild salmon foods.

However, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations identified that farmed salmon feeds can also contain animal by-products from poultry, meat meal, blood and hydrolysed feathers. Crazy right?

Additives such as enzymes, crustacean products (to colour the salmon flesh), vitamins and selenium are also added. None these are ingredients that any wild salmon would ever come across, let alone eat. All these food items are about as far from a species-appropriate diet as you can get.

Aquaculture promotes itself as a sustainable solution to overfishing. But it takes 1.5-8kg of wild fish to produce a single kilogram of farmed salmon. Is that sustainable?

In reality, the aquaculture industry is actually a significant contributor to the depletion of wild fish stocks as opposed to saving them.

A salmon farm can hold upward of 2 million salmon in a unnaturally small space. As with land-based meat farms where animals are kept in crowded conditions, fish farms are plagued with diseases that spread rapidly among the stressed and crowded fish populations.

To eliminate marine pests and disease, several dangerous neurotoxic pesticides are used. People applying these toxins to fish farms wear full protective clothing head to toe. And they end up in the farmed fish we eat. To make matters worse, these chemicals are dumped into open water, where it spreads with local currents.

Sea lice, pancreas disease and infectious salmon anaemia virus have spread across global fish farms. But have we, as consumers, ever been informed of such ‘fish pandemics’? I don’t think so.  Are we ever given sufficient information to know if we are buying and eating diseased fish? Again – I don’t think so. Scary stuff…

So, what’s the solution to this dangerous food?

Unfortunately, the vast majority of fish, even wild fish, is often too contaminated to eat frequently. Most major waterways in the world are contaminated with mercury, heavy metals, POPs and agricultural chemicals. These bioaccumulate in fish fatty tissues, which ends up on our plates…

If a salmon flesh is pale pink with wide fat marks, it is likely farmed. Avoid Atlantic salmon, as salmon bearing this label are almost always farmed. And we now know what happens to that!

A possible exception is smaller fish with short lifecycles, such as sardines and anchovies. These have lower contamination risk and higher nutritional value. So, they may be win-win alternatives to toxic salmon.

Other good choices include herring and fish roe, which are crammed with essential phospholipids that nourish your mitochondrial membranes.

So, I think we have dispelled the myth that salmon is a healthy food to eat. I hope you will think twice before purchasing it, or at least check it sources and find out more about its lifecycle. There are of course more conscientious fish feed producers who do ensure the food is safe…

Increase your awareness. It is not an easy task, I know. But your continued health and sustainability may depend on it.

Be that annoying person at the restaurant or the fish counter who asks a lot of questions. If the person selling the fish can’t provide the information you need, pick something else.

Buyer beware!

#JPReflects