ALERT: Salmon Fraud Scandal

[PinkDiamond]

If you ever saw the conditions fish are farmed in and what they're fed, you'd never touch farmed seafood again, and with the price of salmon, this is a serious fraud.

Salmon Fraud Scandal
Investigation finds rampant replacement of wild with farmed; We raised the first alarm 10 years ago
10/29/2015 - By Craig Weatherby

"As Yogi Berra once said, "It's like deja-vu, all over again”.

Vital Choice founder Randy Hartnell spent 20 years fishing Alaskan waters for salmon and herring.

Back in November of 2004, he was in New York City for a joint television interview with Andrew Weil, M.D.

The interview was focused on the health benefits of omega-3s, salmon as the premier healthy source, and the distinction between wild and farmed salmon.

During their trip, Randy and Dr. Weil toured lower Manhattan’s (now defunct) Fulton Fish Market. Randy recounted their dismaying discovery in Salmon Buyer Beware: An Eye-Opening Trip to Manhattan’s Fish Market.

"As we roamed among the fish mongers we came upon stacks of boxes labeled ‘Wild King Salmon’, in an area used by a major regional distributor. I knew fresh wild King salmon was out of season, so I asked the product’s owner where he was getting it. To my amazement, he admitted that the salmon in the boxes were actually ‘farmed’ wild king salmon.”

Randy then contacted Marian Burros, lead food writer for The New York Times, to tell her what they’d found.

That tip resulted in the newspaper’s own investigation and subsequent exposé, which we covered in NY Times Calls Wild Salmon a Gamble for Consumers.

Salmon fraud continues unabated
Sadly, the practice of substituting farmed salmon for wild salmon continues unabated … as we reported in Consumer Watchdog Finds "Wild” Salmon Scam Remains Routine, Salmon Fraud Persists, and Salmon Scam Rampant in Restaurants.

Over the intervening years, activist groups like Oceana have conducted similar investigations, using DNA testing that’s revealed widespread fraud in the sale of seafood.

(For more on this topic, see the long list of reports in the Seafood Labeling & Fraud Issues section of our news archive.)

Now, Oceana has released the results of a new investigation into the practice of substituting farmed salmon for wild salmon.

The results show that an astonishing ..."
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[Lydia]

No kidding. Farmed fish is not good for you at all. We support commercial fishers, not fish farmers.

[crazy8s]

As a result we don't eat fish or salmon any more.

[mick]

I dont have to read the post to agree with the sentiment. Basically with salmon here, you are dragging around a bag of fish, foul processed food and excrement that destroys everythng living under it in a foul mountain of crap. Theres the food is in no way natural. Te fish are not natural and as expected the taste is not natural. Its the color that sells it, and no bones. I sometimes but a samon tail for the dogs once a year or so, they cost 2 bucks each from the Vietnamese. Dogs love them.

[PinkDiamond]

Well now it's even more important that you know the source of your salmon because as you probably know, the Funds Due on Approval board has just approved genetically modified salmon that is not going to be labeled as GMO, because the nanny state thinks corporate profits are more important than you being allowed to determine what you eat.

Vital Choice Seafood has always guaranteed their salmon is wild caught, and has been my source for salmon for years so I know I can highly recommend them. Seafood and salmon in particular have health benefits you don't want to miss out on; just make sure you're getting wild caught and support commercial fishermen and not fish farms.

[mick]

We have Australian Salmon here aremous somethig trutter lemme look. Arripus Trutta is the fish. It tasted like crap to me. You catch em off the beach and at river mouths. A good one is 5 pounds and up, most caught are aound 2 pounds or so. Just no taste. On the BBQ 30 seconds after caught, not too bad but not worth catching to eat IMHO.

When I cook fish, its in milk flower butter for whiting and flathead, I steam everything else, except the odd bit of flake, aka gummy shark which I deep fry in batter once or twice a year and pretend Im back in state school and it cost 10 cents, not $7.50.

We are surrounded by more ocean than anyone else, but we pay the highest prices for fish. The Skipper still gets jack the middlemen make all the money. Every country on earth is down here raping and pillaging the oceans, Huge factory ships, its not good.

What passes for fresh fish around the world, has at best, been in an ice slurry in a trawler for a week.

I live 800 yards from about a 260 sq kiliometre bay, there are only three families remaining who have fished the bay for over 100 years and still sell fresh fish daily. The remainig professional fisherman, sell to the fish market, where it gets onsold to supermarkets and is 3 days old befoe they get it. Retail buying, the best you can hope for is a local fishmonger who buys daily from the markets.

Good fish here, 30 bucks a pound, cheap fish, 15 bucks a pound. Anything less cost has been frozen or imported frozen.

So to get fresh fish here, you have to catch it yourself really. Anything over 2 days old is not fresh to me. A boat cant go out, catch enough fish, get back in, unload, ship to market and sell in two days. In the old days they could, but times have changed.

I somtimes buy canned salmon. Sirena is the only good brand, When I was a kid, you got one huge slab in the can, thats why you bought it and it was prime, in prime olive oil. Now same thing is one smal chunk and scraps. All overfished. Too many people.

[PinkDiamond]

That's interesting mick, and I'm glad you do your own fishing occasionally so you can enjoy that fresh fish. The sockeye salmon at VitalChoice is bright red/orange, tastes wonderful, it's caught by deep sea fishermen in the Northern Pacific waters, and it's canned fresh, and if they're still doing as they were years ago when I started buying it from them, it's sliced and canned immediately. You get a whole cross section of fish with the spine in it, and with Fukushima pouring radiation into the Pacific that's causing die offs and algae blooms, I asked about whether or not they test their salmon for radiation since I understood they did, and the rep confirmed they do, and have found absolutely none in their salmon to date, which is a big plus.

I took advantage of their Black Friday sale and picked up a 12 pack and a 6 pack of salmon so I could get free shipping on top of the discount. The bottom line is I paid $5.27 per 7.5oz can for the best tasting and freshest canned salmon around. That size feeds both of us, and all I do is heat it lightly in butter, sprinkle with dill, and squeeze lemon or lime juice over it; whatever I have on hand. We like to put it on onion rolls and it makes 2 apiece for us, and you can't beat feeding 2 people for less than ten bucks.

Oh!! Almost forgot; I noticed they have a division in Oz so you can try it out if you want without incurring international shipping.

[mick]

Vital Choice, I will check it out.

Sockeye Salmon!!!!!!!Now theres a blast from the past, I used to eat it, as you describe, I loved the bone, the best part! I dont remember the brand, but I can image part of the ad and hear the voice. Im a big fan of canned salmon, I was told what I was eating is the dead ones that have spawned, so no damage done to the stocks. About the best I have found here, red salmon, john west, about 9 bucks for the 7.5 oz ish can.
I think its all cooked in the can, steamed, I guess.

Salmon, tuna, sardines, I all prefer out of the can. I do give the fogs the occasional can of very cheap car food, which is pretty much crushed up Australian Salmon! What a hoot, I just rememnered that, kinda confirms my thoughts about it. It is good berley tho, stick a few holes in a can, add rope, let it sink, beautiful fish, come to me.

I am gunna buy me some tomorrow.

[SwordfishMining]

Chumming (berly) are you...works for me. I miss fishing. I used to fish a lot then I started doing opal & a family instead. Used to hunt more too, but I might have just as well been a vegetarian as I seemed to be wherever the game was just out of range. I buy my salmon from stores that know what GMONAZIS some of their customers are over here close to the coast when I do do fresh fish. My close friend an ex factory boat captain will not touch anything out of a can. PERIOD! But to each their own as personal experience makes believers out of people de3spite the propaganda... I can't not eat some tuna, sorry dolphins and turtles; glad people are watching out for you. But hey you trust the food chain or you don't. I still look at it close as it slides out of its metal safe. Ok a lot more people die from bad food than terrorists each year but the odds are just that. I confess I eat close to the farm just because I can although living close to the farm I'm sure Ive been affected by herbicides and pesticides and what ever else goes into modern society. It's always something.

[PinkDiamond]

My Dad worked for his cousin's oil company that was right on the water in Oceanside on Long Island, and during the summer my best friend and I would get him to take us to work with him, and while he worked we'd go out back and drop crab traps, and sit there with our fishing poles all day, and it was always a blast and sometimes we had a good enough haul to feed all 9 of us in my family.

We laughed until we cried one afternoon when I pulled up my trap and found a small blowfish had been down there with the crabs and when the sides of the trap lifted it got spooked and tried to swim out thru the wire, but it expanded full of air and got stuck, so when I pulled the trap up he got caught in the side of the trap and was firmly stuck in the hole until he deflated. I finally got him out and thought I'd drop him into a Dixie cup with seawater in it, but again he blew up in the tiny cup, filling it entirely and pushing out all the water, and this time his tail was sticking straight up and wiggling which threw us into fits of laughter again. Finally I pulled him out and threw him back into the ocean.

My grandparents also took my brother and I out to Fire Island where we'd sit all day fishing for flounder, and occasionally we'd hook a sand shark instead which we always got a big kick out of, and other kids who were fishing would run over to see what all the commotion was about, and some would be freaked out about these small sharks and start yelling "SHARK", as if it was a great white.

If we could get my grandfather to gut a fish for us we'd throw the innards up in the air and the seagulls would flock to us and scoop it all up before it hit the ground, but we didn't get to do that often because if other fishermen were there they'd get ticked at us for drawing the seagulls in.

And one more thing. Although I don't particularly like canned foods myself, there are some foods such as seafood that we can only get really "fresh" if it's caught and canned immediately, so those items I will eat canned despite the BPA/BPH in the can's lining, but not often. Those 18 cans of salmon will last us over a year, and I eat even less tuna these days. Oh, and the BPA/BPH-free cans aren't any safer; it's just a different chemical so they can say they're free of the most used chemical.

If you do order from them LMK if the price is comparable to what I got, despite the difference in our currency's value. I would be curious to see if they offer deals that are as good as the one I got, in the land down under.