Opinion: Should I Order the Salmon?

Where's the salmon from? asked the server at a Carmel restaurant.

It's from somewhere up north, the server winged it.

Wild? I persisted.

Yes, the server replied, although the fish was actually farmed in Scotland.

Eighty percent of the salmon served in restaurants is farmed, and even salmon purported to be wild caught is, according to one survey, usually raised in farms where they may host cancer-causing chemicals, red dyes and parasites such as sea lice.

Restaurateurs know that customers are more likely to ask if the fish is fresh or frozen, rather than whether it is wild caught or raised in dense pens where the fish are fed poultry litter, hydrolyzed fish feathers and antibiotics that remain in their flesh.

Salmon farms, called floating pig farms, are both a cause and result of the decimation of wild salmon populations. Some farmed salmon escape their pens, mate with native species and transmit parasites and diseases. Escaped farmed salmon so devastated its rivers that Norway resorted to poisoning rivers to 'reboot' by eliminating the infected sea life.

Farms are unsustainable, as couch potato salmon are often fed smaller fish like sardines instead of a natural diet. Unless fed a synthetic pigment, they lack the pink color consumers expect. Fish farm waste smothers the sea floor with bacteria that deprive shellfish of oxygen.

Even farmed salmon is a source of Omega 3, the healthful fatty acids doctors recommend. Some say these fats are so beneficial that it's worth ingesting the farmed salmon, even if they contain ten times more toxins like dioxins and PCBs than their wild counterparts.

These 'good fats' can be obtained from sardines, mackerel, krill oil, or other fish oils. Smaller fish like sardines are also lower on the food chain and therefore less likely to contain heavy metals like mercury.

How can consumers know whether the salmon is farmed or wild? Atlantic salmon is farmed and usually imported from Norway, New Zealand, British Columbia, Scotland or Chile. The fuel to fly in the fresh salmon exceeds the energy value in the fish, to say nothing of the pollution and greenhouse gases.

If the salmon, whether in a restaurant or grocery, is listed as 'Atlantic,' it's farmed. Alaskan salmon are wild and fished sustainably.

Because populations of local Chinook and Coho salmon have crashed by 80 to 95%, local fisheries have been closed for two seasons and local - caught salmon is unavailable.

Congress is considering legislation, HR 3503 (McDermott - WA) to restore the once-robust salmon and steelhead fisheries of the Columbia and Snake Rivers in the Pacifica Northwest. Wild salmon travel as much as 4,000 miles from the ocean to return to the very stream where they were hatched, only to encounter insurmountable dams. The legislation broaches the controversial idea of removing dams that are probably the major cause for the dramatic decline of these once abundant, continues at right iconic species.