Atlantic Salmon | Alaskan Harvest Seafood Blog

Atlantic Farmed Fish Suffer Disease Outbreak

As of January 2, 2009, the Scottish government has declared the presence of a second Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) outbreak among farmed fish populations. The virus manifests itself as severe anemia, darkening of the liver, and internal hemorrhaging, and results in very high mortality rates. While the disease is not transmissable nor dangerous to humans, the outbreaks can cause a major shift in fish production from that area, as entire populations must be destroyed in order to avoid further spread or contamination of other fish, according to Scottish Law and the Diseases of Fish Act of 1937.

Scotland’s Fisheries Research Services are currently engaged in investigating and controlling the outbreaks through a number of measures, including taking samples and performing laboratory analyses from different stocks, and restricting the movement of live and dead fish to and from infected areas.

Consumers should be aware of the disease, as it may result in shifts in fish supplies and result in increased prices for farmed Atlantic salmon. Wild Pacific salmon is safe from the disease, and those wild stocks remain unaffected.

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Greenpeace scoring ranks supermarkets failing

Filed under: News — Tags: Atlantic Salmon, Cod, Fishing, Global Warming, Greenpeace, Salmon, Tuna —

Recently, the Greenpeace organization has released a ranking of many nationwide grocery and supermarket outlets, commenting that the commonly sold farmed Atlantic salmon, as well as shrimp, pollock, cod and tuna are all considered to be “red listed.”

Red listing is the Greenpeace term for hazardous, or unacceptable scores on their ranking structure. While we in the industry have known for a long time that Atlantic salmon, especially the farmed variety has been widely sold to consumers through supermarkets regardless of the health issues it causes, the public is just beginning to become aware of the true dangers of this fish. High mercury content, as well as water pollution and poor maintenance of the facilities where these fish are raised can lead to serious side-effects if the product is consumed. We don’t even recommend this for a pet!

Recently we’ve even changed our supply of Alaskan Tuna so that our products remain completely acceptable on even the toughest standards.

Read the full article about Greenpeace and their thoughts on the changing status of the seafood industry here.