Campaign Boosts Prices For Wild Salmon

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"Since those high prices in the late 1980s, West Coast salmon fishermen have struggled. A strong El Nino in 1994 depleted food in the ocean, drastically reducing salmon landings. Salmon farms in Chile, Norway and Canada filled the gap, driving down prices as they cranked up production.

But over the past two years, campaigns promoting the +health+, taste and environmental benefits of ocean-caught salmon have converged with efforts by fishermen to produce a better fish through careful handling. Along with scientific studies on fish contamination and new laws, ocean-caught salmon prices have been pushed back up.

"It's the perfect storm, pardon the pun," said Dalton Hobbs, administrator of the Oregon Department of Agriculture's marketing division, which last month launched its Seafood Oregon advertising campaign. Accounting for inflation, the $5.50 a pound Oregon fish buyers were paying last week for large chinook, the West Coast's premier commercial species, would have been the equivalent of $3.33 in 1987. That's the year Dixson got $4.50 for one boatload in San Francisco.

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Last January, the journal Science published a major study that found increased levels of cancer-causing PCBs in farmed fish over wild fish. And in 2002, a court ruling required grocery stores to label farmed fish as containing dye to turn the flesh pink. Next fall, federal law requires stores to label fish with the country they come from. "What we have now is an informed public that wants our product," said Daryl Bogardus, skipper of the Pices, tied up across the dock from Dixson's Dragonet. "Instead of taking a back seat to farmed fish, we're getting the price we should."

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http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/news/nation/8594195.htm

Farm raised salmon is the same as wild salmon so they can keep damming rivers and wasting water to irrigate desert areas. Seriously though, I was surprised at how toxic the farm raised fish is. I wonder what the hell they feed them?