Celebrity chef Rick Moonen was a champion of sustainable seafood long before it was the cool thing to do. When swordfish stocks were in trouble more than a decade ago, he dove into the “Give Swordfish a Break” campaign and whisked the fish off his menu. Chilean sea bass? Poof. Gone. When wild salmon wasn’t in season, the chef would turn to sustainably farmed arctic char as a substitute.
Today there’s a notable change to the chef’s menu: It now proudly includes farmed salmon.
For many eaters who care deeply about sustainable seafood, farmed salmon was likely their gateway fish. The issues surrounding it are easy to grasp, including antibiotic and pesticide use, disease, and sea lice infestations that don’t stay contained at the farm level but can negatively affect nearby wild species. And let’s not forget the granddaddy of all farmed salmon controversies, AquaBounty’s push to farm genetically modified salmon. Approvals for that are still lingering in FDA limbo.
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Read the full, original article: Is it time to reconsider farmed salmon?
