A new study by The Environmental Health Perspectives journal points out the dangers of persistent organic pollutants in farmed salmon. Yet the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch Program just approved one kind of salmon farming. Host Jeff Young talks with Shelia Bowman of the Monterey Bay Aquarium about how one company is trying to clean up their tank.

Transcript

YOUNG: For years, environment and health advocates have urged consumers to avoid farm-raised salmon. Two recent developments might muddy the waters around salmon aquaculture: a new study links the contaminants in those fish to insulin resistance – that’s bad. But the influential Seafood Watch gave its first-ever seal of approval to one kind of salmon farming, the practices used by AquaSeed Corporation in Rochester, Washington – that’s good.

Confused? Well, we were too, so we called up Sheila Bowman to sort things out. She’s the senior outreach manager for Seafood Watch at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Welcome to Living on Earth!

BOWMAN: Thank you, Jeff; it’s great to be here.

YOUNG: Well let’s start with this study on contaminants in farmed salmon. This was published in Environmental Health Perspectives, there’s some link to insulin resistance, which may be a precursor to a type of diabetes. What did we learn here?

BOWMAN: Well I think what that study highlights is within in the environment there’s these persistent, organic pollutants. These are things like the DDT’s and the pesticides that we’ve been using. They’re persistent, they’re not breaking down, they’re not going away, they’re finding their way into first the environment and now into our food system. And these salmon are just kind of one of the places where these end up, and of course we’re interested in and impacted when it’s something we eat.

YOUNG: Why is this of special concern for farmed salmon?

BOWMAN: Well, the thing about farmed salmon is it’s a system where you are raising carnivorous fish in fairly intensive situations, usually pretty highly packed farms with fish. And these farmed fish are really being forced to eat pellets that you find where they’ve taken lots of wild fish, put them into pellets, concentrated any toxins that might be there, and put those out to the fish.