Document text
M/CLOUDY Temp: 50 °F Wind: W at 9 mph Tuesday, April 1, 2003 SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map EXTRA HomeLife Magazine W3 Magazine Jobs @ Mail Tribune Tempo A & E Oregon CarZone Wellness Connection Real Estate Newspaper in Education Prime Times Outdoor Journal Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People CLASSIFIEDS Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Find Everything E SOUTHERN OREGON Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar ABOUT US FAQ What's New Advertise Home Delivery Classified Ad Contact Us Media Kit Email Story to a Friend March 27, 2003 Buyers beware of pen-raised salmon By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune Walking through a Medford grocery store last year, I happened near a perky clerk behind the seafood counter as she barked out her sales pitch. "We have fresh pen-raised salmon today," she called. Then she pumped her eyebrows and smiled, suggesting that buying one of her Atlantic salmon filets somehow might be a good thing. I felt like an organic farmer offered a hot deal on genetically altered tomatoes. Anyone who catches and eats Pacific Northwest salmon knows that these "exotic" Atlantic salmon are like a papier-m�ch� version of the real thing. Born in sterile trays and reared for years in pens set in ocean bays, these pen-raised salmon are the piscatory equivalent of steroid-laden chickens whose feet never hit the barn floor. Yet here she was, hawking a fish fed what amounts to cat food laced with red dye to pinken up its white flesh to look like the real McCoy. "I see that in grocery stores, too, and sometimes I mess with their minds by asking them a bunch of questions about where their fish really came from," says Dave Bjorkman, who works at Fishermen’s Market in Eugene. "They never do. I know I’d never recommend it to a customer." Friends don’t let friends eat pen-raised salmon. Salmon-lovers throughout the West can make good on that mantra this week as the first batch of real salmon — fresh, troll-caught salmon brought in by commercial fishermen off the Oregon Coast — begin to grace the region’s fish markets. These salmon that swim naturally in the ocean not only look better and taste better, they also simply are better than their test-tube cousins cooped up their entire lives in underwater corrals from British Columbia to Chile. Like aging actresses hiding behind heavy makeup, the pen-raised fish need regular doses of a drug called astaxanthin to make up for the natural carotenoids that turn ocean salmon’s meat its pinkish hue. And it’s not just looks that count. A 2000 Wall Street Journal story rating real salmon verses pen-raised salmon gave the ocean salmon a 9.7 overall edibility score out of a possible 10, and the pen-raised Atlantic salmon garnered just a 4.83 edibility score. Yet many Oregonians still believe a salmon is a salmon is a salmon. "It’s all packaged real nicely, but people don’t know what they’re really getting," says Bob Quaccia, a 51-year-old Ashland veteran of 15 years of commercial salmon fishing in Alaska. "But they buy it." And they’re not alone. Industry sources say pen-raised salmon accounted for just 10 percent of the world market in 1986, but that share jumped to 58 percent in 2001 — the year a crash in the ocean salmon market caused Quaccia to sell out. In 2002, the farmed salmon accounted for 69 percent of the total global salmon sales, with Alaska netting 11 percent of sales and Oregon, Washington and California splitting the final 20 percent. Pen-raised fish out-sold free-ranging salmon even in Oregon, where the state fish is the chinook — the one that swims freely in the ocean, not in a wire-mesh box. "People should know where their fish is coming from and know what the difference is," says Anne Pressentin Young, spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in Portland. Oregonians appear a little more schooled in recent years about the difference between regular salmon and pen-raised salmon, says Pressentin Young, who acknowledges that she peppers waiters for details about their salmon before anyone at her table orders a salmon dish. "I’m terrible to go to a restaurant with," she says. Often, the people cooking the salmon don’t know the difference. A respected Jacksonville restaurant this winter offered a dish of "wild steelhead" on its menu, a claim that either was a mistake or a crime. Steelhead legally are classified as a sport fish, meaning they are illegal to sell like salmon, which are classified as food and can be sold. So it could only be a pen-raised steelhead, and there’s nothing wild about that. Nancy Fitzpatrick, administrator of the Oregon Salmon Commission, recalls dinner at a California restaurant that offered "Atlantic-King salmon." "There’s no such thing," says Fitzpatrick, of Lincoln City. "They’re totally different animals. It’s amazing." The lure of pen-raised salmon over ocean salmon isn’t a victory over the tastebuds. It’s an issue of convenience. Ocean salmon are seasonal, caught during set fishing seasons running off and on now through fall. Pen-raised fish are available on demand. They’re just hauled out of their pens, killed and shipped. "Farmed salmon are available every day and they can crank them out like clockwork, whatever size you want," Fitzpatrick says. "In our Suzy Homemaker society, that’s desirable." Another issue is that consumers appear to be drawn to farmed salmon in the mistaken belief that eating crop fish helps protect imperiled "wild salmon" from extinction. "When some people eat an ocean salmon, they think they’re eating an endangered species, like they’re eating the last one," Fitzpatrick says. "Obviously, that’s not true." So they buy their pen-raised salmon, coat it with sauces and spices and layers of mayonnaise that act more like deodorants than culinary accoutrements. "I know when I cook my salmon, I never add anything to it," says Quaccia, the former commercial salmon fisherman. "You don’t need to." And you don’t need to settle now, either. "Eat ours now, while it’s here," Fitzpatrick says. "Eat the farmed salmon when ours isn’t available." Because life’s too short not to be a salmon snob. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Printer Friendly Version Email Story to a Friend Subscribe Archive: Click to Search M Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2003 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy Website Feedback A D V E R T I S E R S