The Salmon Revolution

or, "Would You Like to Super-Size Your Salmon, Madam?"

Pity the poor salmon. Even in the wild waters of its natural habitats, your average salmon gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop. If it makes it through life without picking the wrong fly and being yanked unceremoniously from the water by an angler, can a salmon look forward to a peaceful retirement in some remote backwater?

Not a chance. If he's lucky, the poor schnook might have the opportunity to be eaten by a bear while he's swimming upstream trying to mate.

Talk about looking for love in all the wrong places.

The problem with salmon is not that they're unlucky, it's that they taste really good. Bears figured that out a long time ago, which was bad enough, but now that people know it salmon really have problems. Everybody wants salmon, all the time.

Sustainable wild fisheries and responsible fish farms do exist. But in many places, caution and restraint have been tossed overboard in the seemingly never-ending quest to artificially force salmon to grow faster, be bigger, and look, well, oranger.

The result has been widespread environmental damage, diseased and contaminated fish, corrupted wild stocks, etc. How bad is the situation? Almost all the farmed salmon produced worldwide is now on Seafood Watch's red Avoid list (the exception being US tank-raised salmon.)

But it ain't over yet, of course.

The latest entry into the Frankensalmon derby is the AquAdvantage® Salmon (yes, a fish with a registered trade name) from a Massachusetts company called AquaBounty, whose mission statement describes it as wanting to be part of "The Blue Revolution" which in case you didn't know (I didn't) involves "bringing together biological sciences and molecular technology."

The aforementioned "Salmon®" (on the fast track to FDA approval, BTW) is genetically modified to grow twice as fast as normal, which, in addition to fulfilling the company's lofty goals, should start a 'green revolution' in their share price. But there's nothing to worry about, of course: the CEO of the company assures us all that "you don't get salmon the size of the Hindenburg."

Too bad.

I kind of like the idea of giant mutant salmon bursting free from their tanks and taking revenge on their gene-manipulating overlords. Call it The Salmon Revolution.

For the latest recommendations on wild-caught and farm-raised salmon, visit Seafood Watch's Salmon Page.