By Vivian Moreau
A year after a high-profile study advised consumers not to eat farmed salmon more than once a month, some high-end Ottawa restaurants still have it on their menus.
Philip Wettel, head chef of Daly’s at the Westin Hotel, says it’s a question of price and availability.
“As a chef I prefer wild, but we have to make a living here also,” Wettel says, citing the almost $4-per-kilogram difference in price between farmed and wild salmon. He says wild salmon is difficult to order from local suppliers and that few customers ask if salmon is wild or farmed.
Farmed salmon came under scrutiny in January 2004, when a study published in the prestigious journal Science found that farmed salmon, gathered from around the world, has almost 11 times the amount of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) than wild salmon.
PCBs are known carcinogens to humans. The report, funded by U.S.-based Pew Institute, also advised consumers not to eat more than one serving a month of farmed salmon, while wild salmon could be eaten up to eight times.
“We get what we can get,” says Joe O’Shaughnessy, manager of The Black Tomato in the Byward Market, adding that availability determines whether the restaurant serves farmed or wild. But, O’Shaughnessy also says almost every kind of food is farmed to a certain extent, so why worry about salmon.
“The difference isn’t that big,” he says, “and most people wouldn’t recognize a farmed salmon.”
Salmon farming is big business in Canada. In British Columbia alone, it brings in $300 million a year. Salmon are raised in large open water net pens often situated at river mouths and fed a diet of processed fish, antibiotics, and in some cases, pesticides.
Environmentalists criticize not only how salmon are raised, but the damage the operations inflict on their surroundings.
Farmed and Dangerous, a coalition of environmentalists and First Nations groups, claims B.C. fish farms produce the same amount of waste as a city of 500,000. They also argue that the tight enclosures salmon are raised in become soup pots for parasites to thrive in.
Sea lice, which feed off salmon skin and blood, attack not only the enclosed salmon, but the wild salmon passing by. They have contributed to decreased, and in some cases decimated, salmon runs on the west coast.
Aside from the damage farmed salmon operations can cause, some chefs find farmed salmon unappealing.
Adel Ayad has been owner of Clair de Lune, on Clarence Street, for 23 years. The recent first-time father says he wouldn’t serve farmed salmon to his customers any more than he would to his toddler son.
“Sometimes you get farmed salmon with big sores on them that run right through the fish,” he says. “I wouldn’t eat that, why would I serve it to my customers?”
Health Canada says farmed salmon is safe to eat.
Even after run-ins with sea lice, farmed salmon are rich in omega-3 fats. And the PCB levels found in some are within the two parts per million limit that Health Canada allows, says Carole Saindon, a ministry spokesperson.
“Our official position is that the benefits of eating any fish, including farmed fish, outweigh the potential risks,” says Saindon.
Ayad says part of the problem is suppliers who only provide farmed salmon. But David Encarnacao, president of Capital Fish Market, an Ottawa fish supplier, says wild salmon is certainly available in season. “But there is almost no demand,” he says. Encarnacao believes restaurants are attracted to the lower price of farmed salmon.
One seafood supplier says he goes through a couple thousand pounds of salmon a week. “Restaurants buy it when I have it,” says Eric Beveridge, owner of Jost Kaufman Seafood. When wild isn’t in season it can be provided frozen, he says. Organically raised farmed salmon is also available.
Bob Johnson, manager of the Fish Market, on York Street, says they do sometimes serve farmed salmon, although they prefer wild. “We have had some customers question which fish are farmed,” he says.
He says their chef hasn’t noticed any difference between farmed or wild salmon.
But Daly’s head chef has.
“Wild salmon is moist, less fatty than farmed salmon,” says Wettel. “I notice the difference, but I’m not sure guests would.”
Clair de Lune’s owner admits his zero tolerance attitude toward farmed salmon is unusual.
“Not many people think like I do,” Ayad says. “It would be good if more people did.”