Concerns about toxicity from carcinogens, such as dioxins, PCBs (man-made hydrocarbons) in farmed salmon

national | environment | other press Thursday December 25, 2014 00:20 by Ireland Against Salmon Farms

SMOKED salmon is the easy part of Christmas. Throw it on brown bread, with lemon and black pepper, and the innocents will think it’s posh and that you’ve spent a lot.

But you can get 100g of Everyday Value smoked salmon in Tesco — “responsibly sourced from the waters around Scotland, Norway or Ireland” — for €3.59.

But, today, as many of us prepare for the big Christmas supermarket shop, the Friends of the Irish Environment have ramped up their boycott of farmed salmon, strengthened by the news that the international Slow Food Movement — which counts among its supporters Bridgestone’s Sally McKenna and that icon of Irish sustainable food, Darina Allen — has condemned intensive open-pen fish farms.

“Open-net pen aquaculture is not a solution to the problem of overfishing,” says Slow Food.

“It damages natural ecosystems on a local and a global level, including wild stocks, habitats and water quality.”

The Italian-based Slow Food Movement is dedicated to linking “the pleasure of good food with a commitment to their community and the environment” and the FIE boycott campaign is appealing to our consciences about what they deem the dangers of farming salmon in cages in the open sea.

For example, sea-lice infestation among farmed salmon impacts wild stocks.

FIE reckons that between 12% and 44% fewer wild salmon are now spawning, but Bord Iascaigh Mhara denies that there has been any impact on wild stocks.

Most people can’t be bothered with the environment, when they’re Christmas shopping.

What they care about is a good price for a product that will make a starter Tesco calls “moreish”.

And farmed salmon is a healthy food, isn’t it? With all that Omega 3 and fish oils and low-fat protein, it’s a super-food.

Is this true? We don’t know.

For the full text of the report see the link below.