Month: March 2015

Good news or is it another PR exercise coming from Norway salmon farmer this morning. Marine Harvest withdraws from the Association of Norwegian Fish Farmers due to the association’s lack of efforts for sustainability and the fight to contain sea lice. Hard to believe my google translation on this one. If Marine Harvest are serious about sustainablilty then they must end open net sea cagesa and come onshore with closed contained production units that will be subject to EU waste managment and clean water framework directives. Minister Coveney should ask Marine Harvest why they failed to outline their solutions to sustainability and sealice when they last met in Bergen as the minutes have no record of him asking these questions.

Marine Harvests kommunikasjonsdirektÔö£┬®r Kristine Gramstad. Foto: Trine Forsland

Marine Harvest resigns from FHL

Marine Harvest has chosen to opt out of FHL and into Norwegian Industry. – We are in fundamental disagreement in several key issues, says EVP Communications Kristine Gramstad.
News 03/20/2015
By editorial

The world’s aquaculture company currently has announced that they sign transition from employer association FHL to Norwegian Industries.

– Marine Harvest and FHL disagree in some of the basic questions about how this industry will continue to evolve, and what role FHL which union should adopt. Therefore it is best for both parties that we now join Norwegian Industries, says EVP Communications Kristine Gramstad in a press release from the company.

The disagreement is due mainly to two factors; vision on the development of Norwegian aquaculture, and the way FHL employer organization operated. Marine Harvest has repeatedly advocated that FHL will be operated by the so-called consensus principle; confronting issues that there is already agreement among the members. Marine Harvest believes that it is problematic that an employer organization is emerging as a political actor and goes across member companies interests.

Huge potential in aquaculture
Marine Harvest believes the potential of the industry is enormous, but it also points out that the industry must take on the serious challenges it faces before the big growth can come.

– The future is literally in the ocean. To reach potential the salmon farming industry must challenge and solve the sealice issue. This is about developing Norway’s second largest export further in an environmentally sustainable manner. FHL and Marine Harvest has unfortunately opposing views on this, she says.

Still want broad cooperation in industry
The company will continue to support the Fishery and Aquaculture Industry Research Fund (FHF) and the Environmental Fund, and still want a wide cooperation including R & D, feasibility and environmental projects.

– It is important that the industry collaborate closely across company and national boundaries, to solve the challenges we face, and to come up with smart solutions of tomorrow. We wish to cooperate with all breeders around the world to develop the industry, says Gramstad.

Transition in Norwegian Industry
Marine Harvest has today reported transition to NHO’s Norwegian Industry.

– We are pleased to announce the transition to the NHO’s employers’ association, Norwegian Industry. In Norwegian Industrial find other companies and industries that are world leaders in the development of environmentally friendly technologies and sustainable solutions. This strengthens the industry’s competitiveness and improve profitability and jobs. Norwegian Industry working with a number of topics that are highly relevant also for aquaculture, says Gramstad.

Marine Harvest melder seg ut av FHL

50 SHADES OF PINK
Here’s why your farmed salmon has color added to it
Gwynn Guilford March 12, 2015

From left, trout, salmon and catfish, are displayed in the seafood section of a discount retailer, often called a “big-box store,” Sunday, April 6, 2014, in suburban Virginia, just outside of Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Orange is the usual gray.(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
So distinctive is salmon’s orangey-pink hue that Crayola named a crayon after it. It’s an accurate representation of the flesh of wild salmon, but not that of farmed salmon, whose meat is naturally gray. Or at least, it would be if salmon farmers didn’t spike their artificial diet with pink-ifying pellets.
Wild salmon get their ruddy shade by eating krill and shrimp, which contain a reddish-orange compound called astaxanthin. (That shrimp-heavy diet is also what turns flamingos pink.) The spectrum varies with the species: Since Alaska’s sockeye salmon are closer to the Bering Sea’s teeming krill, they’re the reddest of all. Salmon further south – oho, king, and pink, for instance – eat relatively less krill and shrimp, giving them a lighter orange hue.
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(via Grapplergourmet.com)
Like their wild cousins, farmed salmon come in a spectrum of pinks and oranges, depending on diet. But it’s the farmers and not the food chain that determine the salmon’s color.
Since farm-raised salmon live in a pen, they’re fed kibble made from a hodge-podge that might include oil and flesh of smaller fish (e.g. herring and anchovies), corn gluten, ground-up feathers, soybeans, chicken fat, genetically engineered yeast.
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A salmon fish farm operates in a bay near the town of Vagur on Sururoy island October 17, 2007. REUTERS/Bob Strong
A Faroe Islands salmon farm.(Reuters/Bob Strong)
An essential ingredient in these pellets is astaxanthin. Sometimes it’s made “naturally” through algae or pulverized crustaceans; other manufacturers synthesize the compound in a lab, using petrochemicals. While it provides the salmon with some of the vitamins and antioxidants they’d get in the wild, salmon health isn’t the selling point.
It’s the “pigmenting,” to use feed industry parlance, that really matters, letting salmon farmers determine how red their fillets will be. (Thanks to a 2003 lawsuit, they have to alert customers to the fact of “added” coloring.)
To facilitate that selection process, pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-LaRoche developed what’s now known as DSM SalmoFan™ (Dutch multinational DSM acquired it in 2002).
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(DSM)
Wild salmon, which is tastier, more nutritious and can cost two to three times that of farmed salmon (which is usually $6-10 per pound), serves as the aesthetic standard as well.
Research by DSM, now one of the biggest astaxanthin makers, shows wealthy shoppers go for darker-hued salmon, which fetch up to $1 per pound more than lighter shades, something other industry research (pdf) suggests as well. One study found farmed salmon colored lower than 23 on SalmoFan (see below) to be “difficult to sell at any price” (pdf).
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(DSM)
Pigmenting supplements are the most expensive component of the farmed salmon diet, constituting up to 20% of feed costs. But it boosts profitability. And while creating a product that fetches prices approaching those of wild-caught salmon, farmers can still churn out fillets at an industrial clip. That often makes things harder on the Pacific Northwest fishermen whose catch they’re trying to emulate. An abundance of farmed salmon forces fishermen to lower prices of their wild-caught salmon in order to compete (pdf, p.xxiii).
The fact that consumers will shell out more for salmon that looks wild, even if it got that way by eating pellets in its pen, hints that people want to be eating wild salmon, but not quite badly enough to buy the real deal. If it’s price that’s keeping consumers from buying wild-caught salmon, they might want to consider saving a few bucks more and start demanding farmers cut out those expensive pigments??????and sell them salmon that’s gray.

http://qz.com/358811/heres-why-your-farmed-salmon-has-color-added-to-it/