| Why "Organic" Farmed Salmon is Causing a Nasty Smell |
| | | | Until recently, organic farmed salmon has received favorable press, being held up as a healthy, environmentally safe alternative to overfishing wild Atlantic salmon. But farmed organic salmon often doesn't deliver the radical difference in production methods that consumers expect from other categories of organic food. In fact, according to Iain Tolhurst, a highly respected organic grower in Britain, "If the public was given the full facts about organic salmon, they would demand something better. So-called 'organic' salmon is making a mockery of organic standards." Conventional salmon farming has earned a bad reputation for 'souring' rivers with uneaten feed and feces, attracted the parasitic sea lice, and harming wild fish more than they help. But organic farmed salmon operates on the same basic principles: cages stocked with artificially reared juvenile fish. While organic fish are less tightly packed than their conventional equivalents, organic-fish farmers keep up to 30,000 fish in one cage, the equivalent of a bathful of water per fish. "Organic" farmed salmon are also fed added vitamins and minerals (both natural and synthetic) and food not in their natural diet, such as wheat flour. "Organic" fish farmers use pesticide-based anti-sea lice treatments such as cypermethrin and emamectin benzoate, and the fish can be treated with up to three courses of veterinary medicines.
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