NY Times: Stores Say Wild Salmon, but Tests Say Farm Bred

[Guest guest]

This is infuriating but not particularly surprising.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/dining/10salmon.html?ei=5070 & en=dee3a52c840891\

86 & ex=1113364800 & pagewanted=all & position=

Tom

April 10, 2005

Stores Say Wild Salmon, but Tests Say Farm Bred

By MARIAN BURROS

Fresh wild salmon from West Coast waters used to have a low profile in New York:

it generally migrated eastward in cans. But a growing concern about the safety

of farm-raised fish has given fresh wild salmon cachet. It has become the

darling of chefs, who praise its texture and flavor as superior to the fatty,

neutral-tasting farmed variety, and many shoppers are willing to pay far more

for it than for farmed salmon.

Today, " fresh wild salmon " is abundant, even in the winter when little of it is

caught. In fact, it seems a little too abundant to be true.

Tests performed for The New York Times in March on salmon sold as wild by eight

New York City stores, going for as much as $29 a pound, showed that the fish at

six of the eight were farm raised. Farmed salmon, available year round, sells

for $5 to $12 a pound in the city.

For shoppers, said Pasternack, the chef and an owner at Esca, a theater

district fish restaurant, buying authentic wild salmon " is like a crapshoot. "

The findings mirror suspicions of many in the seafood business that wild salmon

could not be so available from November to March, the off-season. Wild and

farmed salmon fillets and steaks look similar because farmed fish are fed

artificial coloring that makes them pink, but that coloring can be measured in

laboratory testing.

With East Coast wild salmon all but extinct and West Coast wild catches

restricted by quotas, farmed fish constitute 90 percent of this country's salmon

sales.

Yet last month, when fresh wild salmon should have been scarce, 23 of 25 stores

checked by The Times said they had it in stock.

The Times sent random samples of salmon bought on March 9 to Craft Technologies

in , N.C., for testing and comparison of levels of natural and artificial

pigments, a method that scientists at the Food and Drug Administration have used

to identify wild and farmed salmon. The Craft scientists analyzed pigments known

as carotenoids.

Only the sample bought at Eli's Manhattan on the Upper East Side ($22.99 a

pound) tested wild. Salmon tested farmed at six stores: Dean & DeLuca in SoHo

($16.95); Grace's Marketplace ($28.99) and Leonard's ($19.95) on the Upper East

Side; M. Slavin & Sons wholesale market at the Fulton Fish Market ($4.50 a pound

for whole fish) and its Brooklyn retail store ($5.99); and Wild Edibles at the

Grand Central Market ($20.99).

Officials at Craft Technologies said that a sample from Whole Foods Market in

Chelsea ($14.99) seemed to show that the fish had been farmed at one time and

had escaped into the wild. Storms or holes in the netting are some of the

opportunities that fish exploit to make a break for it. Figures for the number

that flee their pens are hard to come by, but it may be in the millions yearly.

A researcher at the F.D.A., who reviewed the results only on the condition of

anonymity, said that Craft Technologies " had used a method that is accepted, "

and that he agreed with its findings.

In the last two years two scientific studies have reported that farmed salmon

contain more PCB's and other contaminants than wild salmon, and numerous studies

have called farming practices an environmental hazard.

When told of the results of the fresh salmon tests, Gretchen Dykstra, New York

City's commissioner of consumer affairs, said, " Labeling any item to be

something it's not is a classic deceptive practice. " She added that her agency

would " be investigating whether these stores are in fact improperly baiting

their customers. " Mislabeling food is against federal law.

Officials at the stores had a variety of explanations.

Leonard, an owner of Leonard's, said that his records did not go back as

far as March 9, but that his sales clerks " must have gotten the salmon from the

wrong pile in the back. "

Lettier, the vice president for retail operations at Dean & DeLuca, said

four of his vendors could not provide him with their paper trail. He said he now

wanted proof of the source of the fish from his vendors and would have his

salmon spot-tested.

Meyer, a partner in Wild Edibles, said he had narrowed the source of

his fish to two Northwest vendors and had suspended business connections with

both.

At M. Slavin & Sons in Brooklyn, the store manager, Phil Cohen, said: " Our

salmon is from Canada. All wild salmon in Canada is farm raised. "

But it can't be both.

A whole salmon sold to this reporter as wild from Slavin's in the Fulton Fish

Market was pulled from a box marked " farmed Canada. "

" I know you are looking at the label, but believe me, " the clerk at Fulton said.

" Don't pay any attention to the label. "

When his remarks were repeated to Herbert Slavin, an owner of M. Slavin, he

said: " How do you know he is an expert? We do not misrepresent. "

The Times tested two salmon fillets sold as wild by Grace's Marketplace, one

labeled " Rainforest, " indicating it came from Washington State, the other

" Columbia River. " Joe Doria Jr., an owner of Grace's, said that one of his

suppliers, Alaskan Feast, had sold wild Alaskan troll king salmon to the store.

But Kim, an owner of Alaskan Feast, said he had not sold the store

Rainforest or Columbia River wild salmon, adding that it would have been almost

impossible to buy any fresh wild salmon from either source in March.

Mr. Doria offered another explanation: " Sometimes when these fish come off the

boat they get separated, and I got sent the wrong salmon from my supplier. "

In addition, Mr. Kim called to say that a whole salmon one of his salesman at

the Fulton Fish Market sold to this reporter as wild was actually farmed. He

said his salesman had " made a mistake. " The fish was not analyzed.

Margaret Wittenberg, the vice president for marketing and public affairs at

Whole Foods, said its wild salmon was properly labeled and came from the

trolling of California's wild king salmon.

The Times's findings were confirmed by two Norwegian researchers, Dr. Bjorn

Bjerkeng, a leading researcher in the analysis of salmon carotenoids at the

Institute Aquaculture Research in Sunndalsora, Norway, and Dr. Harald Lura, a

fish biologist and expert in salmon reproduction, who said of the study, " The

methodology and results are convincing. "

Wild salmon become pink by eating sea creatures like krill, which contain a

carotenoid called astaxanthin. Farmed salmon are naturally grayish but turn pink

when they are fed various sources of astaxanthin, including one that is

chemically synthesized and others that originate from yeast or microalgae.

During Craft's two-week testing, it determined that the controlled sample and

the one from Eli's had more than 60 percent of the form of astaxanthin that

occurs naturally, within the range of 50 to 80 percent typical for wild salmon.

All the other samples except the one from Whole Foods had 30 percent or less of

the form dominant in wild salmon. The sample from Whole Foods had 37.9 percent.

The farmed samples tested high in either the synthetic or the yeast forms of

astaxanthin.

Fleming, a spokeswoman for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, a state

agency that promotes wild seafood, said, " The symptom is not confined to

Manhattan. " She added, " We've had calls from various places around the country

over the last several years from indignant fans telling us that stores are

promoting product as wild Alaskan salmon when in fact it is not wild salmon at

all. "

" The extent of the problem is certainly surprising, " Ms. Fleming said,

" especially in a place like New York, where the most sophisticated consumers in

the country live, people who really scrutinize a purchase. "

Federal regulations governing country-of-origin labeling took effect on Monday.

They require fish to carry a paper trail back to the source, but they apply to

full-service markets like grocery stores, not to fish markets.

ph Catalano, a partner at Eli's and the Vinegar Factory who is responsible

for the fish those markets sell, said he was not surprised by the test results.

" The bottom line on all this is money, " he said.

Faced with fillets of wild and farmed salmon, even renowned chefs like

Ripert of Le Bernardin and Mr. Pasternack of Esca, who pay top dollar for the

choicest seafood, could not visually distinguish one from the other. After the

fillets were cooked, however, they could taste the difference.

" The most obvious clue is flavor, " said Ms. Fleming of the Alaskan agency, " but

by that time it's too late. "

[Guest guest]

Tom-

>This is infuriating but not particularly surprising.

>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/10/dining/10salmon.html?ei=5070 & en=dee3a52c84089\

186 & ex=1113364800 & pagewanted=all & position=

Jeez. I wonder whether I've been burned. That's outrageous.

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