As food, isn’t farmed salmon the same as wild?

For me, farmed salmon have a different and less interesting flavor. They are fed formula food to accelerate their growth, they consume excess calories and don’t get the same “exercise” as their wild counterparts, and their flesh is consequently softer. Also, they’re significantly fattier, and even though it’s “good” fat, high in omega-3, it may be too much of a good thing, at least gastronomically, if not nutritionally. Other issues cause greater concern. Since salmon are confined in much closer quarters than would occur in the wild, they are much more susceptible to disease. Aqua-farmers routinely use antibiotics to prevent this, though admittedly less than they did in the industry’s early years. Knowing now that overuse of antibiotics can actually foster the development of resistant microorganisms, this practice should be of concern to all of us. More disturbingly, farmed salmon are fed dyes derived from petrochemicals to color their flesh anywhere from pale pink to rosy red (farmer’s choice) to mimic the color wild salmon achieve through their diet. And most troubling of all, two recent scientifically credible studies report unacceptably high levels of PCBs in farmed salmon.