For the first time an ocean-farmed salmon has gotten a coveted nod from an influential “eco-friendly” fish list. On Monday the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program moved Verlasso farmed salmon from Chile to its “yellow list” as a good alternative.
The Seafood Watch list is one of several that assign seafood a red, yellow or green rating, based on their sustainability and environmental impact. Red is “avoid,” yellow is “good alternative” and green is “best choice.”
Consumers and wholesale buyers use these lists “to make choices for healthy oceans,” says Peter Bridson, the Seafood Watch aquaculture manager.
Up until now none of these lists has included salmon raised in ocean-based fish farms. Farmed salmon has long been disdained by environmentally motivated consumers. One reason was because salmon must be given feed high in omega 3 fatty acids to thrive. Ground-up herring, anchoveta and other fatty fish contain those fatty acids and were used to make salmon feed.
Historically it took about four pounds of wild fish to produce a pound of salmon. That number has come down to between 2.5 and 3.5 pounds to one pound of salmon through better management, said Bridson.
Even so, about 17% of the world’s fish catch is rendered for fish meal and oil, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Other concerns are that the salmon are often grown in high-density pens. This can lower water quality and result in infestations of parasites that can spread to wild fish populations. Chemicals used for disease and parasite control also can spread to nearby wild fish.
Salmon farms are beginning to clean up their acts and Verlasso, based in Miami, has changed its practices enough to make it onto Seafood Watch’s yellow list.
The biggest impact will be on wholesale buyers, says John Sackton, publisher of Seafood.com, an industry news site based in Lexington, Mass. “Companies that want to buy sustainable seafood use these guidelines,” Sackton says. That includes “places like Bon Appétit Management Co., which does a lot of sales with tech companies.”
The list is also used by many chefs and will likely have an impact there, he said.
Verlasso has made several changes to its growing practices over the past three years, said director Scott Nichols. The biggest has been switching to feed whose omega 3 fatty acids come from a genetically modified yeast rather than from wild-caught fish. Verlasso is a joint venture between AquaChile, which raises the salmon, and DuPont, which produces the feed.
This reduces the amount of wild-caught fish needed to feed the Verlasso salmon and allows the company to achieve a “fish-in, fish-out” ratio of 1.34 to 1. That means it takes 1.34 pounds of wild fish to produce one pound of salmon, Nichols said. Some fish is still necessary in the feed in part because salmon are picky eaters and don’t like feed made entirely from corn and soybeans.
While consumers might be surprised to hear that the fish feed is made from genetically modified ingredients, feed from GMO yeast is little different from the feed from GMO corn and soybeans that has been fed to farmed fish, cattle, pigs and chickens for decades, said Chris Mann, a senior officer with the Pew Charitable Trusts’ environment program.
The online grocery FreshDirect has been carrying the Verlasso salmon since it was first introduced in 2011. The company sells in the greater New York City metropolitan area and focuses on organic and sustainable foods.
“We were looking for something better than a traditional farmed salmon that we could try to educate and upgrade customers into,” said David McInerney, FreshDirect co-founder.
The gamble has paid off. Despite selling for about $2 more a pound, the Verlasso salmon now makes up 30% of FreshDirect’s salmon sales “which is pretty strong considering how hard we push wild salmon in season,” said McInerney.
At other stores, Verlasso salmon typically sells for $2 to $5 more a pound.
The entire salmon farming industry is becoming more sustainable and less environmentally damaging overall, said Seafood Watch’s Bridson. No other companies have applied to get on their yellow list “but I think there’s definitely the potential for things to change,” he said.
Salmon farming has transformed the market for fish in the United States, raising consumption. Salmon has moved from “a luxury you only had on rare occasions to something that’s an everyday protein,” says Pew’s Mann. In 2011 salmon was the third most consumed seafood in the United States, after shrimp and tuna fish, according to the National Fisheries Institute.
2013 USATODAY.com