| I've found myself outside a fair amount this summer, grilling fish on the barbecue – July's fantastic weather has allowed for heaps of outdoor cooking, and fish's inherent lightness suits my appetite.
Therefore, I was astounded to discover that a study commissioned by the Environmental Working Group, an American think tank, confirmed what Canadian and European studies had previously reported: random samples of farmed salmon, bought at grocery stores on the east and west coasts, contained, on average, much higher levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) than beef, pork or, most importantly, wild salmon.
PCBs are one of those nasty chemical compounds that I'd heard of but didn't really know much about. They're probable carcinogens and their use has been banned in Canada and the U.S. since the mid-1970s (they were used in electrical transformers and insulators, for example), but their main characteristic is that they're alarmingly persistent in the environment. The study states that farmed salmon contains higher levels of PCBs because a portion of farmed salmon’s diet is fish meal, made from small open water fish containing PCBs. Farmed salmon also is relatively fatty (apparently farmed salmon contains 52 per cent more fat than wild salmon, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and this is borne out on my grill, where farmed salmon seems more limpid and slippery) and fat is where PCBs are stored.
The main issue, which this study has brought to light, is a discrepancy between different government departments on what amounts of PCBs are safe for human consumption. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration stipulates that PCBs in salmon should occur no more than two parts per million, a number which is quoted with approval by the B.C. Salmon Farmers’ Association as being 35 times higher than that found in farmed salmon. The Canadian Guidelines for Chemical Contaminants and Toxins in Fish and Fish Products, overseen by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, has the same guideline as the U.S. FDA.
However, the U.S. regulations were established in 1984 and haven't been amended since. In 1999, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees PCB levels in wild salmon, began requiring that wild salmon contain 500 times less PCBs than the U.S. FDA and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency: 0.004 parts per million. If the salmon the Environmental Working Group studied were wild, rather than farmed, the U.S. EPA would suggest that the ones it found having the high PCB levels (seven of the 10 salmon studied) should be eaten no more than once per month. But under the Canadian guidelines, the very same salmon could have been safely consumed without worry about PCBs (i.e. more than once per week). There’s an obvious disconnect here.
7/10 were loaded with PCBs -- under the Canadian and current FDA policy, would be OK, but under the EPA, they’d be out of wack. The EPA governs wild salmon, and the FDA governs farm salmon.
Boyd’s Lobster Shop on 14th Street and 15th Avenue S.W. identifies their salmon as farmed or wild on tags placed in the coolers. Boyd’s owner, Gerard Comeau, confirms that 90 per cent of his salmon sales in the summer are wild sockeye, and Boyd’s sells between 100 and 200 pounds per day of salmon. Some of his customers prefer Atlantic farmed salmon, due to its high fat content – it’s richer, and it’s also about a dollar cheaper per pound. In the winter, which is the off-season for salmon, Boyd’s will sell mostly farmed salmon.
Neil McCue, restaurant chef for the dining room at Catch, Calgary’s premier fish restaurant, confirms that all the restaurant’s salmon entreés are wild, and each fish is identified by which boat it was caught on and by whom. However, he uses farmed Atlantic salmon for Catch’s in house-smoked salmon – it’s easier to work with than wild salmon for smoking, and more consistent.
In the end, the question must rest with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, the federal government department responsible for regulating toxin levels in fish. Who’s right, the U.S. FDA and the Inspection Agency, or the U.S. EPA? Both Boyd's and Catch confirmed that they would look to the federal government to establish guidelines.
At deadline, calls to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency hadn’t been returned.
If you’re interested in this subject, check out the following sources: the · www.ewg.org/ – the Environmental Working Group’s Web site includes the study in its entirety.
· www.intl-ecogen.com/ – Canadian research in the area, sponsored by the David Suzuki Foundation.
· www.nytimes.com/ –the New York Times ran an excellent article on this topic, which is where I first read about this issue.
· www.salmonfarmers.org/ – The BC Salmon Farmers’ Association. |
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