The Unhealthy Practices Of Fish Farming

On January 16, 2004 I wrote you about Salmon and PCBs and the problems with eating farmed fish. Salmon is a great source of omega-3 fatty acids and we need to get omega-3 fatty acids if we expect to have good health.

We get plenty of Omega-6 fatty acids as it is readily available to us being in all kinds of foods, but not omega-3, which results in most people getting too high a ratio of omega-6 to omega-3...the effects of which results in poor health.

According to the University of Maryland, an inappropriate balance of these essential fatty acids (high omega-6 to omega-3 ratio) contributes to the development of disease while a proper balance of the two fatty acids helps maintain and even improves health.

A healthy diet should consist of roughly one to four times more omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3 fatty acids. The typical American diet tends to contain 11 to 30 times more omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3 and many researchers believe this imbalance is a significant factor in the rising rate of inflammatory disorders in the United States, including heart disease.

So why am I telling you this? I'm telling you this because fish is an important source of omega-3 fatty acids and that we need to include fish in our diet, but not necessarily farmed fish. We need to seek out wild fish, since wild fish tend to be much lower in mercury, lead, and other heavy metals that can cause health problems, and eat it twice a week.

To better understand why we should be asking questions regarding the source of the fish being offered to us at our local markets, let's look at how fish are raised on the farm. It really isn't pretty.

Salmon is farmed in the ocean close to shore in large, overcrowded, netted pens overflowing with feces.

According to the Sierra Club web site, "The intense accumulation of wastes from these operations can spoil the local marine environment and spread disease."

These penned up farmed Salmon breed so rapaciously, while confined so closely together, that it necessitates the use of huge quantities of antibiotics, artificial colorants, pesticides and various other drugs to keep the salmon healthy.

Because the farmed salmon do not get the same nutrients as wild salmon, their meat remains a nasty grey looking color. To make the fish marketable and to look like their wild free ranging cousins, farmed salmon are fed lots of artificial colorants.

Beyond the questionable "nutrition" that one might get from artificially colored salmon (with a side of antibiotics and pesticides), there's a larger environmental issue.

Although the farm industry denies it, another issue is that farmed salmon do escape and breed with wild salmon. Cross breeding with wild species weakens the wild species' ability to survive in the wild contributing to its extinction.

As to farmed salmon's omega-3 content, it is believed that wild salmon contains much more omega-3 fatty acid than farmed salmon. Fish have to eat algae to get omega-3 fatty acid and most farmed salmon are raised in enormous floating pens in ocean waters where algae may not have a chance to grow.

Although the industry denies this, I can find no proof to the contrary.

To your good health and longevity! Because you're worth it!

Ira Marxe
CEO, Good Health Supplement

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