Status: False advertising
It was only in the course of writing
Hippo Eats Dwarf that I became aware of how widespread the use of deceptive marketing is in the food industry. 'Chicken nuggets' often contain mostly ground-up skin and bones from cows and pigs. Order veal at a restaurant and there's a good chance you'll be served cheap pork. And fish restaurants are notorious for serving cheap fish to their patrons, having creatively renamed it to sound more appealing. So, for instance, Pacific Rockfish becomes 'snapper,' and very often lobster is really South American langoustine. So
this news from Consumer Reports about a widespread farm-raised salmon scam didn't really surprise me:
Salmon that is labeled "wild" may actually be farmed-raised, an analysis in the August issue of Consumer Reports reveals. Consumer Reports bought 23 supposedly "wild" salmon filets last November, December and March-during the off-season for wild-caught salmon-and found that only 10 of the 23 were definitely caught in the wild. The rest of the fish was farm-raised salmon... Typically, wild salmon costs more than farmed. CR paid an average of $6.31 a pound for salmon labeled as farmed (all of which was indeed farmed) compared with $12.80 for correctly labeled wild salmon. The most costly of the bunch was farmed salmon labeled as wild, with an average price of $15.62 a pound.
So how do you tell if your salmon is farm-raised or wild? They recommend two ways. First, if it's from Alaska it's probably wild, since Alaska doesn't allow Salmon farming. Also, "CR's expert tasters noted that wild salmon has a stronger flavor and firmer flesh than farmed." Of course, you also have to hope that your 'salmon' isn't really pink-dyed tuna.
Comments
Are you serious?????? Thats bad.....
Also canned "sardines" are usually herring.
If there are other meats in them, well that is bad. As far as I am aware the UK pet food industry is more closely monitored than processed meat for humans.
The main way they detected farm-raised salmon was by testing for the dyes fed to the salmon to make their flesh orange-red. (Wild salmon get that color from a diet of crustaceans and carotene-rich algaes, but a similar diet would be too expensive to feed farm fish). The difference in what they eat is also the main reason wild salmon is considered to be a much more beneficial food from a nutritional point of view.
But isn't it sad that people actually think they can buy fresh "wild-caught" salmon in the northern hemisphere during November,December, and March. Even the most rudimentary awareness of the salmon's life cycle (don't they teach this in 5th grade anymore?) should make it obvious that the odds of this not being a hoax are vanishingly small.
http://www.snopes.com/business/market/pinkcan.asp
1. Although Snopes mentions the tuna vs. salmon marketing war story, most of the versions she cites refer to "pink salmon vs. white salmon." As some MoH readers know, I've spent some time in Alaska, where salmon is a major industry and food staple. Different species of salmon show varying degrees of pinkness or redness in their flesh-- King salmon is quite red; Chum or Silver salmon is hardly pink at all; and others are in between. Alaska natives often make a salmon jerky (for home use) that comes out more tan or brown than pink. The pinker or redder salmons tend to be more expensive, not just for the color, but also because they have a higher oil content and thus a more pleasant texture in the mouth and a richer flavor. But I have never heard of any species of salmon, in any condition, being marketed as "white salmon." I doubt that such a term exists. Besides, what's funny about saying that light-pink salmon isn't as pink as dark-pink salmon? It's a much better story when the comparison is between salmon, which is usually at least a little pink, and tuna, which is not pink at all. So I think the "White Salmon" version must be a corruption of the "Tuna vs. Salmon" story.
2. Snopes illustrates this article with a picture of-- not a tuna nor a salmon nor even a can-- but a mackeral (probably an Atlantic mackeral). How hard would it have been to come up with a picture of a tuna, or at least a can of tuna?
I KNOW THE COST IS MORE FOR WILD SALMON, AND THE TASTE IS MUCH BETTER, BUT I WANT TO GO ON A FISH DIET AND I DON'T WANT FARMED RAISED AND NEED TO KNOW HOW TO TELL THE DIFFERRENCE WHEN GOING TO PURCHASE.