An endangered chum salmon attempts to jump a small dam on the Deschutes River in Washington. While researching my post on Cheesecake Factory, I came upon contradictory information on how many pounds of wild fish it takes to create a pound of farmed salmon.

Industry sources like this one paint a (relatively)  rosy picture: "Every pound of salmon requires one-and-a-half pounds of fishmeal, a ratio far more efficient than other farmed animals." That's a much better feed conversion ratio than you get from beef (10 pounds of feed yield one pound of beef) or pork (5:1).

But then you get sources like Dan Imhoff, who refers to the "approximately three pounds of wild fish needed to produce each pound of farmed salmon."

What gives? I turned to Taras Grescoe, author of Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, which I consider the most important book on food politics since Omnivore's Dilemma. I remembered from reading the book that Grescoe had debunked the industry claim, but couldn't remember precisely how or find my copy. So I emailed him to ask. Here's what he wrote:

The salmon farming industry deliberately tries to mislead people with this feed conversion stuff; I find it maddening. The salient figure is not how much feed gets turned into salmon flesh (and the industry has indeed gotten better at that-a lot of the feed used to just fall to the bottom of the ocean. Now they've installed underwater cameras, so they can see when the fish have stopped snapping up the feed.) The salient figure is how many pounds of smaller ocean fish (which are converted into feed) it takes to make a pound of salmon flesh.

In other words, the industry is getting up to some chicanery here. They're comparing apples (pounds of feed) to oranges (pounds of fish). So what happens when you compare pounds of wild fish that gets turned into feed, to pounds of resulting farmed fish? Here's Grescoe in his email:

The analysts I talked to put the ratio at closer to 3.9 to 1. That's almost 4 pounds of smaller fish (anchoveta from Peru, for example, or herring, as well as krill, which is truly a disastrous thing to remove from the food chain-see my book on that one) to make one pound of salmon.

That's just scandalous. Anchovies are a glorious food--delicious as a flavor builder in canned form, fantastic grilled when fresh. They're a nutritional powerhouse, they don't accumulate much mercury, and their stocks replenish rapidly. We'd make ourselves very happy by eating more of them--so why are we grinding them into meal, pelletizing them along with some truly dodgy ingredients (see below), and feeding them to miserable confined salmon?

But really, it gets worse. After writing the Cheescake Factory post, I found my copy of Bottomfeeder. In his email, Grescoe suggested I look up his section on krill, which he describes like this:

These small, translucent, shrimp-like invertebrates are a keystone species in the oceans of the world, filtering the minute phytoplankton that other species are unable to process and sequestering atmospheric carbon through their feces, which sinks to the sea floor.

Moreover, "everything in the ocean from anchovetas and penguins to blue whales" feed on krill.

Sounds like a species worth keeping around. Even without the fishmeal industry, krill are under pressure--in Antarctic waters, populations have plunged "as global warning decreases the sea ice coverage that provides habitat for the plankton the krill need to survive." That's a feedback spiral--krills sequester carbon, and as climate change erodes their population, less carbon gets sequestered, triggering more climate change.

But that has not stopped the salmon-feed industry. According to Grescoe, two European companies--EWOS and Skretting--control 80 percent of the salmon-feed market. And their  pellets "are coated in krill to make them palatable to farmed fish." Grescoe reports that "enormous vessels from six different countries are vacuuming up krill" to satisfy demand. Krill fishing has been banned on the U.S. west coast, but the salmon farms that supply us still consume the stuff en masse.

The book also reveals some real gross-out stuff about salmon feed. Writes Grescoe:

In the wild, salmon are top-of-the-food-chain predators, subsisting, at various times in their lifecycle, on plankton, krill, squid, and smaller fish. Industrial aquaculture, however, has turned them into consumers of some of the nastier byproducts of land animals.

That means that as with the rations of of feedlot cows, salmon feed contains poultry meal--"an industrial product made of intestines, undeveloped eggs, spray-dried blood, necks, and feet of poultry." An that's not all: "chicken manure--a potentially rich source of tape worms, salmonella, and arsenic--is also a key ingredient of salmon feed."

So we're feeding not just chicken parts but also chickenshit to salmon.

Grescoe also notes that, in response to criticisms of depleting wild fish stocks to feed farmed fish, companies are substituting some vegetable oil (mainly from genetically modified rapeseed) for fish oil. But that's not great, either. Rising demand for veggie oil puts pressure on ecologically fragile land, including tropical rainforests that sponge carbon. Moreover, subbing veggie oil for fish oil reduces the amount of omega 3 fatty acids in the the resulting farmed fish, Grescoe reports. Of course, the industry markets farmed salmon as an excellent source of omega-3s.

Of course, the answer to these dilemmas isn't for restaurants like Cheesecake Factory to switch their menus to wild-caught salmon year round. The answer is to think of salmon as a delicacy--to be enjoyed fresh when it's in season in places like the northwest, and as a treat in preserved form elsewhere. Rather than menu subsitutions, we need to be moving toward what Wendell Berry has called the "universal necessity of local adaptation." Every area, every season has its culinary delights and nutritional powerhouses. We need to reacquaint ourselves with them. 

At any rate, anyone interested in understanding the full weight of the trouble facing the oceans--and the full depravity of industrial aquaculture--must read Grescoe's book.

Related Links:

Black (fly) magic

What’s the dish on farm-raised catfish?

Chilean salmon industry plunges into an abyss of pesticides and antibiotics

Because nothing signals a democracy on the mend like a profusion of czars, salmon defenders are now calling for a federal salmon czar.

According to Wikipedia my deep and nuanced understanding of Russian history, we can expect a salmon czar to quickly go drunk with power, lord over peasant salmon, and assassinate political rivals in fits of paranoid rage.

Or, you know, coordinate various government bureaucracies and administrate a sensible management plan.

"It would be better to have one Washington, D.C. office with real power to deal with salmon issues, instead of the highly dispersed and dysfunctional mish-mash that now governs," writes the Daily Astorian editorial board.

But, really, can't they find more democratic titles for these new positions?

Related Links:

Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change

Tweet for the bees

James Bond calls for more marine protected areas

Some 2 million acres near Alaska's Bristol Bay will be opened to development for the first time under a plan released Friday by the Bureau of Land Management. The agency's decision to throw the door open for mining and drilling in the area, which is home to the world's largest sockeye salmon run, is opposed by environmentalists, Native Alaskans, and commercial fisherfolk.

sources:

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

A nonbinding agreement is set to be signed today to breach four Klamath River dams by 2020 that have been messing with imperiled salmon.

source:

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Related Links:

Learning how to count to 350

Friday music blogging: Harper Simon

It’s Getting Ha! in Here: Maria Bamford

Related Links:

Biochemist Oliver Peoples explains how his polymer-producing microbes could transform the plastics i

Energy Trust and the Big Hope

Weatherizing Portland

The dams and aqueducts that shuttle water from California's Sacramento River Delta to the rest of the state will "appreciably increase jeopardy" to salmon and steelhead in the coming months, U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger said Friday. But while Wanger agreed with environmentalists that "the three salmonid species are not viable and are all in jeopardy of extinction," he declined to order a short-term remedy. The National Marine Fisheries Service, in response to a successful lawsuit from the green groups, will by March come up with operational changes to California's water-export system that will hopefully be less harmful to fish. In the meantime, greens had asked that Wanger order an immediate cutback in agricultural water diversion, but he demurred. While waiting for March to roll around, green groups and water agencies will continue discussions on how to balance fish livelihood and irrigation needs.

sources:

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Related Links:

Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change

Global boiling declares war on Thanksgiving

Climate Citizen: Michael Pollan on agriculture and health care

A handful of green groups filed suit Tuesday over the Bush administration's latest plan to protect salmon in the Northwest's Columbia Basin. The feds' proposal "calls for cutting several key salmon protection measures and comes with a price tag of more than half a billion dollars per year," the groups said in a statement. "While it includes some provisions for habitat, hatchery production, and predator control, it calls for no significant changes to the region's federal hydrosystem and ignores the four dams on the lower Snake River that do the most harm to the ... endangered salmon." The Clinton administration ruled in 2000 that the dams stay put for at least a decade; advocates warn that breaching them would mean losing an important source of clean power. But the litigious lot -- including Save Our Wild Salmon, Earthjustice, National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club, and Institute for Fisheries Resources -- say that salmon, and the livelihoods of fisherfolk, should be prioritized.

sources:

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Alaska's prized wild salmon are suffering from a disease that scientists suspect of being boosted by -- you guessed it -- global warming. The emergence of Ichthyophonus as a threat to king salmon has coincided with a steady warming of Yukon River water over the past few decades, which scientists say has welcomed cold-averse parasites northward. "Climate change isn't going to increase infectious diseases but change the disease landscape," says federal marine ecologist Kevin D. Lafferty. "And some of these surprises are not going to be pretty." Literally: Fish infected with "ich" become covered in white, pimply spots, smell funky, and produce mealy, oily flesh. One independent researcher estimates that perhaps 20 percent of king salmon are dying of ich before reaching spawning grounds. If so, fisheries would do well to cut back commercial catches by an equal amount to maintain a healthy population; so far, Alaska's Fish and Game Department has largely chosen to ignore the problem.

source:

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

The federal government, having failed to support salmon to the point that California's fishing season was shut down altogether, may now yank support from fisherfolk. The Office of Management and Budget is requesting that the $170 million put aside as disaster funding for the West Coast salmon industry be reduced to $100 million to offset the increased cost of the 2010 census. (The Census Bureau had planned to use handheld computers to conduct its 2010 count, but a Florida-based contractor had cost overruns; the bureau will stick with a paper-based census, and taxpayers are stuck with the bill.) West Coast congressfolk on both sides of the aisle criticized the proposal to yank salmon funding as a solution. "The fishing community of Oregon is already suffering because of the flawed Bush policies in the Sacramento River basin," wrote Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.). "They should not have to suffer again because the president has hired people in Florida who can't count. We've been there before."

source:

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Related Links:

GoodGuide scanner makes healthy food shopping point and click

Biochemist Oliver Peoples explains how his polymer-producing microbes could transform the plastics i

Black (fly) magic

Six salmon-eating sea lions captured on the Columbia River in the U.S. Northwest were shot and killed over the weekend near the Bonneville Dam by an unknown assailant. A few weeks ago, the federal government itself announced it would allow wildlife officials in Oregon and Washington to kill up to 85 sea lions a year in the Bonneville area since they were eating large quantities of imperiled salmon. However, in response to legal action from the Humane Society, a federal appeals court temporarily halted the hunt in favor of a plan to humanely capture them and cart them off to zoos and marine parks. A hearing on May 8 will determine whether state wildlife officials will be allowed to cull Bonneville sea lions instead of trapping them. Meanwhile, sea lion trapping in the area is being suspended during the investigation of the rogue killings.

source:

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Related Links:

This Halloween, cut flesh for the climate

WWF finds tons of new species about to be wiped out by climate change [slideshow]

Taras Grescoe on factory salmon farming

Sea lions all set to gobble their last salmon supper at a Northwest dam have been granted a stay of execution by a U.S. appeals court. Judges granted an injunction, requested by the Humane Society, that a lower court had denied last week. It's only a partial victory for the Humane Society, however, as the court did OK the transfer of the whiskery rascals to zoos and aquariums; state officials planned to nab and relocate eight sea lions on Thursday.

sources:

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Related Links:

Water, conflict, and security on the banks of the Hudson

This Halloween, cut flesh for the climate

WWF finds tons of new species about to be wiped out by climate change [slideshow]

Denying an injunction sought by the Humane Society, a federal judge has given the go-ahead to Oregon and Washington state officials to trap and kill salmon-gobbling sea lions near the Columbia River's Bonneville Dam. The animal-rights group sued after the National Marine Fisheries Service OK'd sea-lion culling last month. An official hearing on the Humane Society lawsuit could be held as early as mid-May, although sea-lion trapping, which could start next week, will likely be over by then.

sources:

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

California Fish and Game officials voted Tuesday to bar commercial salmon fishing in state waters, in what was, according to one commissioner, "one of the most painful votes I think we've ever taken." Fishing in federal waters off the California coast was banned last week. Next month, state officials are likely to bar recreational salmon fishing in Central Valley rivers as well. Californians can expect fresh-caught salmon to be priced upwards of $30 a pound, if it shows up in markets at all.

source:

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Related Links:

Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change

Biochemist Oliver Peoples explains how his polymer-producing microbes could transform the plastics i

Tweet for the bees

In exchange for four Native tribes dropping lawsuits, the Bush administration will spend $900 million over the next decade to help out Northwest salmon. The settlement reached Monday ends, for the time being, a decades-long legal battle over the best balance of tribal and commercial fishing rights, protection for salmon, and regional power demands in the Columbia River basin. The new plan does not affect four hydroelectric dams on the basin's Snake River, which environmentalists have long insisted must be torn down if salmon are going to see any benefit. The dam question will likely crop up again in early May, when the Bush administration brings a third try at a salmon-protecting plan to a district judge who has rejected two previous offerings as not protective enough.

sources:

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science