There’s rarely an article in the mainstream media about farmed fish that benefits the industry. So on the rare occasions where a positive article is published, I take the time to savor it. Last week the Washington Post ran “Farmed vs. wild salmon: Can you taste the difference?,” which was a blind-tasting of both wild and farmed salmon and the latter was the clear winner. This was a large dose of vindication for anyone selling farmed salmon.
The premise of the article was a simple taste-test of salmon by the paper’s writers, a fish buyer and noted D.C.-area chefs Bob Kinkead and Kaz Okochi. The fillets were prepared simply — steamed with a little salt. The top five choices were all farmed salmon, the top two from Costco and Trader Joe’s, both Norwegian salmon. Wild salmon from Washington and Alaska fell toward the bottom of the list.
The taste-test results came as a surprise, as taste preferences for fish can vary dramatically depending upon where you live and the local fish harvested. Research SeaFood Business has conducted for several decades has shown customer purchase preferences vary depending upon whether the fish is sold at a restaurant or retail store, but taste is always a top concern. There’s no denying that farmed salmon has been the top-selling species for the past decade in the United States.
The article was not the typical farmed-salmon bashing tirade of misinformation, except if you bothered to read the comments, which numbered 57 at last count. The comments are a waste of time unless you take it all with a grain of salt, as the blatantly wrong information that wasn’t in the article reared its ugly head in the comments instead.
Later this week I’ll be moderating a panel, Seafood Sustainability and Aquaculture, as part of the North festival in New York and the audience will be mostly journalists. It will be interesting to hear what information — whether positive or negative — is filtering through to them. And I hope the writer or someone else from the Washington Post is there so I can say: “Thank you.”
