1. The Title should be "Norway became a global salmon behemoth. Now it's facing the consequences". It fits the character limit, why change it?
2. A lot of the conditions for Salmon farming can be drastically improved or completely eliminated if they have done it further away in deep sea rather than coast. It just cost more.
3. China is rapidly improving their Salmon Farming so there isn't much to worry about for Norway. In 10 - 20 years time half of it will be gone.
Points 2 and 3 kind of contradict themselves though, as China doesn't have access to deep sea (at least until the invasion of Taiwan or if China manage to take control of their claimed share of South China Sea).
Recently there has been a push to farm "dry-land" salmon. In other words, the salmon live in large tanks on land, rather than in pens in the sea.
At the moment a company is trying to start one of these close to me. Some local people are opposed, some are supportive, but most just want more objective study and information (i.e. not performed/paid for by the company itself).
The devil may be in the implementation, but it certainly has some big advantages over the coastal pens.
Strange to have an article about salmon farming drawbacks without mentioning escaped salmons polluting the wild salmon population. There has been a strong decrease in wild salmon as they lose the ability to migrate back up the river to lay their eggs due to breeding with escaped farming salmon.
I think the idea is that the migration instinct passed down by wild salmon is an epigenetic heritable trait. This trait is strongly selected for in wild salmon populations, but not in farmed populations. The constant influx of this maladaptive trait into the wild population is leading to an overall decrease in the ability of the wild population to successfully propagate.
It's interesting to see the power of wealth up close. For one the massive lobbying against any tax on the usage of the fjords(or on the wealth). But there is also cases where they will hire retired professors in tangentially related fields (like sea urchins) to write "scientific reports" "showing" whatever they want, which they then send to individual local MPs to convince them to allow more farming.
There have been critical articles about the lice problem in Norwegian newspapers for years, so it's honestly relieving to finally see it talked about abroad. I've felt shameful whenever people talk about the "superior Norwegian salmon".
Hopefully international attention is what it takes for change to meaningfully happen beyond some R&D.
I am surprised by the statement "Today, salmon sushi is a staple of Japanese cuisine"
While in Japan a few years ago, I found no salmon on the menu in sushi places.
When inquiring why, we were told that salmon is not that good, and that is more a food for kids than adults. Did it change or are we just one data point?
I live in Norway and me and my family do not eat farmed fish - for multiple reasons; political, ecological, animal cruelty etc.
A hamburger probably has a better nutritional value than farmed salmon. Children and pregnant women should also limit the intake because it can disrupt development. And the color is fake, if they do not add coloring to the feed, farmed salmon would be gray.
I could go on the whole day about this stuff. The whole thing is just sad.
> A hamburger probably has a better nutritional value than farmed salmon.
Why would you think that? Ground beef typically has higher saturated fat than even farmed salmon and a lot less omega-3.
A hamburger adds a refined carbohydrate bun and sauces on top of that.
I think your political beliefs are overriding factual accuracy.
> And the color is fake, if they do not add coloring to the food, farmed salmon would be gray.
The color isn’t “fake”. It comes from Asataxanthin. Wild fish get it from food they eat. Farmed fish might get it from microalgae-derived sources. Why would it be “fake” if it’s the same chemical? They’re just feeding the farmed salmon the nutrients they need.
Astaxanthin is also sold separately as a supplement because people seek it out, too. It’s not some evil fake chemical dye. The wild salmon naturally eat it, too.
Downvote rather than answer the question to a flagrantly stupid claim about burgers and overt shilling for farm-raised poison salmon? That's HN. Make a bullshit claim, full of holes, and when it is irrefutably exposed as bullshit, hide the contrarian comment through downvoting, without refutation. Bravo, you spineless worm, salmon shill bastards.
This is why it is so difficult to take this place seriously. Thankfully it's not the rule, but it does happen far more often that it should.
Anyway, stuff your poison salmon. Feed it to your children all you want. I will take my sourdough, without your mythical fucking hamburger.
Fatty fish accumulates heavy metales and other unhealthy components and pregnant women in Norway is told to limit the intake. But it has been controversial, the industry is not happy with these recommendations!
I can see this being sensible regarding, for example, swordfish, which is long lived apex predator. They get the bio accumulation of everything they eat. Farm salmon has a short life and a controlled diet. Where would they get heavy metals?
From their food and over time, I assume? Since farmed salmon is fed and live a short life I would also assume that it has lower pollution levels than wild fish of similar size and composition.
> A hamburger probably has a better nutritional value than farmed salmon.
A sensational statement that is utterly false.
Per 100g, Norwegian farmed salmon has 0.1x the sodium, 0.5x the saturated fat, 2x the protein, 20x the Omega-3 fatty acids and infinity-x the vitamin D of your hamburger.
Farmed salmon is a minimally processed single-ingredient protein, while your hamburger is ultra-processed and packed with refined carbs, added sugar and high-fructose corn syrup and chemicals synthesized in a lab.
> Children and pregnant women should also limit the intake because it can disrupt development.
Presumably you're talking about growth hormones?
Because that American fast-food hamburger has plenty of growth hormones.
Under Norwegian law and European Union/EEA regulations, the use of growth hormones in fish farming is strictly illegal.
Pardon, but how the hell is my hamburger packed with preservatives? And how, other than grinding, is it ultra processed, especially if the beef was given to me by a local rancher? I do not understand? And where the hell did the corn syrup come from? I never put Aunt Jemima on my burgers? Not even brown sugar.
Where in the
- Grass-fed beef
- Sourdough bun
- Lettuce
- Tomato
- Onion
Is all this stuff you cite? Any condiment in the known realm of terrestrial cuisine -- and even adult websites -- can be used on fish just as readily as a burger.
A lot of interesting tech is being developed in salmon farming, and e.g. AI has been around for a long time. The north star is offshore farming in giant autonomus constructions far out at sea. Though problem but worth solving
Is it though - I feel like the north star is on land farming. So many benefits. Offshore farming will exacerbate farmed salmon escaping and polluting wild salmon + parasites etc (land farmed salmon can generally be eaten raw or under cooked without being frozen without any worries)
Salmon feed lots, with a similar problem of concentrated waste, cruelty and unhealthy animals. Sounds like the underwater egg solution they discuss in the article might also be solving an optics issue they have. Out of sight, out of mind.
Technically it works. Superior Fresh, as in the linked article, has a viable system. The challenge is that in the beginning it is hard to reach a scale that works economically. Added to that, in Norway it is challenging to grow leafy greens in greenhouses in the winter, compared to the latitude where Superior Fresh is located. It can be done, but is energy intensive. We ran a fully indoor pilot facility for five years in Sweden, it is still operational, under a new team. My ambition is to document what we learned in a CC licensed book. At the moment it is partially documented in a blog. https://cirkularodling.se/build-an-aquaponic-indoor-farm-par...
Some of these farms are truly impressive. Although balancing the health of the fjords is hard. People seem to prefer "wild" salmon but just like we don't eat "wild" cow anymore, I imagine in 30+ years it will be the norm. Hopefully we can shift to that norm in an environmentally friendly way.
We don’t eat wild cows anymore because aurochs went extinct in the last few hundred years.
People still eat junglefowl (ancestor of chickens) and wild boar (pig), but in the developed world domesticated animals are usually both cheaper and tastier.
Addendum: People will probably read that as "au-rochs" (and wikipedia's IPA sure isn't helping here), but it's actually split "aur-ochs". (that latter part being the foundation for the current word 'ox')
Source: studied german enough to recognise that word root
1. The Title should be "Norway became a global salmon behemoth. Now it's facing the consequences". It fits the character limit, why change it?
2. A lot of the conditions for Salmon farming can be drastically improved or completely eliminated if they have done it further away in deep sea rather than coast. It just cost more.
3. China is rapidly improving their Salmon Farming so there isn't much to worry about for Norway. In 10 - 20 years time half of it will be gone.
Points 2 and 3 kind of contradict themselves though, as China doesn't have access to deep sea (at least until the invasion of Taiwan or if China manage to take control of their claimed share of South China Sea).
Recently there has been a push to farm "dry-land" salmon. In other words, the salmon live in large tanks on land, rather than in pens in the sea.
At the moment a company is trying to start one of these close to me. Some local people are opposed, some are supportive, but most just want more objective study and information (i.e. not performed/paid for by the company itself).
The devil may be in the implementation, but it certainly has some big advantages over the coastal pens.
Strange to have an article about salmon farming drawbacks without mentioning escaped salmons polluting the wild salmon population. There has been a strong decrease in wild salmon as they lose the ability to migrate back up the river to lay their eggs due to breeding with escaped farming salmon.
That is... unintuitive. Wouldn't the escaped salmon have to be able to get back upstream enough to where the wild salmon are laying/milting?
I think the idea is that the migration instinct passed down by wild salmon is an epigenetic heritable trait. This trait is strongly selected for in wild salmon populations, but not in farmed populations. The constant influx of this maladaptive trait into the wild population is leading to an overall decrease in the ability of the wild population to successfully propagate.
They’ve bred more docile salmon, according to the article. Getting that DNA into wild populations would be problematic I’d imagine.
Don’t forget the dams and the humpback salmon.
It's interesting to see the power of wealth up close. For one the massive lobbying against any tax on the usage of the fjords(or on the wealth). But there is also cases where they will hire retired professors in tangentially related fields (like sea urchins) to write "scientific reports" "showing" whatever they want, which they then send to individual local MPs to convince them to allow more farming.
There have been critical articles about the lice problem in Norwegian newspapers for years, so it's honestly relieving to finally see it talked about abroad. I've felt shameful whenever people talk about the "superior Norwegian salmon".
Hopefully international attention is what it takes for change to meaningfully happen beyond some R&D.
I am surprised by the statement "Today, salmon sushi is a staple of Japanese cuisine"
While in Japan a few years ago, I found no salmon on the menu in sushi places.
When inquiring why, we were told that salmon is not that good, and that is more a food for kids than adults. Did it change or are we just one data point?
I live in Norway and me and my family do not eat farmed fish - for multiple reasons; political, ecological, animal cruelty etc.
A hamburger probably has a better nutritional value than farmed salmon. Children and pregnant women should also limit the intake because it can disrupt development. And the color is fake, if they do not add coloring to the feed, farmed salmon would be gray.
I could go on the whole day about this stuff. The whole thing is just sad.
> A hamburger probably has a better nutritional value than farmed salmon.
Why would you think that? Ground beef typically has higher saturated fat than even farmed salmon and a lot less omega-3.
A hamburger adds a refined carbohydrate bun and sauces on top of that.
I think your political beliefs are overriding factual accuracy.
> And the color is fake, if they do not add coloring to the food, farmed salmon would be gray.
The color isn’t “fake”. It comes from Asataxanthin. Wild fish get it from food they eat. Farmed fish might get it from microalgae-derived sources. Why would it be “fake” if it’s the same chemical? They’re just feeding the farmed salmon the nutrients they need.
Astaxanthin is also sold separately as a supplement because people seek it out, too. It’s not some evil fake chemical dye. The wild salmon naturally eat it, too.
Downvote rather than answer the question to a flagrantly stupid claim about burgers and overt shilling for farm-raised poison salmon? That's HN. Make a bullshit claim, full of holes, and when it is irrefutably exposed as bullshit, hide the contrarian comment through downvoting, without refutation. Bravo, you spineless worm, salmon shill bastards.
This is why it is so difficult to take this place seriously. Thankfully it's not the rule, but it does happen far more often that it should.
Anyway, stuff your poison salmon. Feed it to your children all you want. I will take my sourdough, without your mythical fucking hamburger.
Astaxanthin for the color fair. What about the salmon is bad for pregnant women?
> Astaxanthin for the color fair.
Why is it fair? Wild salmon also consume astaxanthin.
It’s like complaining that the farmers are bad for trying to mimic the fish’s natural diet.
Fatty fish accumulates heavy metales and other unhealthy components and pregnant women in Norway is told to limit the intake. But it has been controversial, the industry is not happy with these recommendations!
I can see this being sensible regarding, for example, swordfish, which is long lived apex predator. They get the bio accumulation of everything they eat. Farm salmon has a short life and a controlled diet. Where would they get heavy metals?
From their food and over time, I assume? Since farmed salmon is fed and live a short life I would also assume that it has lower pollution levels than wild fish of similar size and composition.
I thought this was true for tuna and somewhat never registered it might be true for salmon too. I need to look this up and update, thank you.
Generally speaking, heavy metals accumulate as you move up the food chain, so it will be true for any large fish.
Growth hormones. It’s better now than some years ago, but still. Some claim the do not use them at all.
And they use a lot of antibiotics.
And there is some accumulation of dioxins and PCBs in the fat due to the feed, but this has also been approved somewhat.
>Some claim the do not use them at all.
It is against the law in most if not all EU countries. It is also the dispute between US and EU agriculture trade.
> A hamburger probably has a better nutritional value than farmed salmon.
A sensational statement that is utterly false.
Per 100g, Norwegian farmed salmon has 0.1x the sodium, 0.5x the saturated fat, 2x the protein, 20x the Omega-3 fatty acids and infinity-x the vitamin D of your hamburger.
Farmed salmon is a minimally processed single-ingredient protein, while your hamburger is ultra-processed and packed with refined carbs, added sugar and high-fructose corn syrup and chemicals synthesized in a lab.
> Children and pregnant women should also limit the intake because it can disrupt development.
Presumably you're talking about growth hormones?
Because that American fast-food hamburger has plenty of growth hormones.
Under Norwegian law and European Union/EEA regulations, the use of growth hormones in fish farming is strictly illegal.
cooked salmon and cooked ground beef seem to have similar amounts of protein per my cursory research.
Pardon, but how the hell is my hamburger packed with preservatives? And how, other than grinding, is it ultra processed, especially if the beef was given to me by a local rancher? I do not understand? And where the hell did the corn syrup come from? I never put Aunt Jemima on my burgers? Not even brown sugar.
Where in the
- Grass-fed beef
- Sourdough bun
- Lettuce
- Tomato
- Onion
Is all this stuff you cite? Any condiment in the known realm of terrestrial cuisine -- and even adult websites -- can be used on fish just as readily as a burger.
Perfectly valid point actually, not sure why you are in gray.
A lot of interesting tech is being developed in salmon farming, and e.g. AI has been around for a long time. The north star is offshore farming in giant autonomus constructions far out at sea. Though problem but worth solving
Is it though - I feel like the north star is on land farming. So many benefits. Offshore farming will exacerbate farmed salmon escaping and polluting wild salmon + parasites etc (land farmed salmon can generally be eaten raw or under cooked without being frozen without any worries)
There seems to be few offshore production facilities compared to on-land ones.
Full title: Norway became a global salmon behemoth. Now it's facing the consequences
Salmon feed lots, with a similar problem of concentrated waste, cruelty and unhealthy animals. Sounds like the underwater egg solution they discuss in the article might also be solving an optics issue they have. Out of sight, out of mind.
Would not feed it to my worst enemy.
Maybe this is the future https://www.science.org/content/article/oceans-away-raising-...
Technically it works. Superior Fresh, as in the linked article, has a viable system. The challenge is that in the beginning it is hard to reach a scale that works economically. Added to that, in Norway it is challenging to grow leafy greens in greenhouses in the winter, compared to the latitude where Superior Fresh is located. It can be done, but is energy intensive. We ran a fully indoor pilot facility for five years in Sweden, it is still operational, under a new team. My ambition is to document what we learned in a CC licensed book. At the moment it is partially documented in a blog. https://cirkularodling.se/build-an-aquaponic-indoor-farm-par...
Some of these farms are truly impressive. Although balancing the health of the fjords is hard. People seem to prefer "wild" salmon but just like we don't eat "wild" cow anymore, I imagine in 30+ years it will be the norm. Hopefully we can shift to that norm in an environmentally friendly way.
We don’t eat wild cows anymore because aurochs went extinct in the last few hundred years.
People still eat junglefowl (ancestor of chickens) and wild boar (pig), but in the developed world domesticated animals are usually both cheaper and tastier.
Addendum: People will probably read that as "au-rochs" (and wikipedia's IPA sure isn't helping here), but it's actually split "aur-ochs". (that latter part being the foundation for the current word 'ox')
Source: studied german enough to recognise that word root