Farmed salmon are dyed orange. Otherwise, they’d be an unappetizing gray. Betcha didn’t know that. Neither do most consumers. And that’s why they’ve filed class-action lawsuits against three major grocery store chains.
My friends over at Smith & Lowney are the attorneys for these cases. It’s nice to see the legal system being used to fight for the little guys.
I discovered dyed salmon in the grocery store, labeled as such. I bought it anyway, but would rather not have my food artificially colored! When you cook that salmon, it stays an odd shade of pink. What can we do for fresh salmon? It all now seems to be dyed!!
You say the undyed fish would be “an unappetizing gray.” Other fish are somewhat gray, and nobody seems to mind that. You must be in favor of the dye, or you wouldn’t call the gray color “unappetizing” — unless it is r-e-a-l-l-y gross to look at!? I wonder what makes the wild fish pink-colored.
Why are the grocery stores being sued? Are they the ones dying the salmon?
I’m against dyeing fish. More importantly, I’m against farming salmon — not only is the product inferior, it causes tremendous environmental harm. (See http://www.farmedanddangerous.org for more information on this.)
The grocery stores were sued because they were not labelling the salmon as artificially colored. Within a week of the suit being filed, the grocery stores settled and started labelling farmed salmon as being artificially colored.
Wild fish are pink colored because of pigments that naturally occur in their prey. Farmed salmon are fed processed meal that lacks these pigments.
Okay, so I’m like 3 years late with this info, but Shetland Salmon is farmed in the wild – and it’s actually fed krill, so it’s naturally pink. More expensive, but not as bad as wild salmon.
Most of the dye used to color salmon comes from a very healthy and natural product source which I will not mention, because I produce and sell it for quite a nice profit. I can just tell you that you shouldn’t be worried about yourself, or the fish, or their color. Most of the time the dye is natural, and the rest of the time at least harmless to you and the fish. There’s no difference in coloring a fish pink as there is in coloring any other food product, and almost all of them are. If you think you’ve been deceived into thinking that you were getting wild salmon because it was pink, then you either have no argument because you can’t tell the difference by taste, or you have no idea how the food industry operates and should become educated to the point where you can choose your products intelligently before complaining.
Wild salmon eat shrimp or krill or other animals that have a shell. the shrimp shells make them pink. Some wild salmon do not eat shrimp (Fraiser river kings) Their meat is white. Some salmon eat more shrimpy creatures than others (sockeye) Their meat is a darker red
Farmed salmon eat a processed diet made of fish waste, (bones and blood and what not from fish packers) and soy protien among other things. It does not always have shrimp in it. The meat will be white. Farmers add the shrimp shells to the fish food. It turns the salmon meat pink.
The stuff that makes farmed salmon pink is the same stuff that makes wild salmon pink. It is called Astaxanthin. It is a carotenoid. It is found in the shells of animals like shrimp and krill. It is why a lobster turns red when you boil it.
I bought ‘Alaska River’ wild caught USA: it was fantastic! A meager fillet sat along side ‘Atlantic Farm-Raised Color Added’ salmon: the grocery (at Ralph’s La Jolla CA) said the coloring didn’t hurt the fish; but the fish was dead already and before that was being raised for
slaughter… What about me? Is the coloring from Jello? Kool-Aid?
I wrote to the Alaska Gov’s head Fish and Game Commissioner
(and while still awaiting reply) to explain my theory as to why
the farm-raised are albinos: the real salmon–the reds–swim
from fresh water to salt water, salt water to fresh water…
I think the intense naturally red coloring is due to a reaction
from nitrogen/sulfur rich fresh water to the iodine (and mercury:
it’s from the ocean rocks and coral reefs; the fish take it in
via the water and rid theirselves of it by excreting it out
the skin as scales… This is why a small person should
eat small fish; the larger–300lbs, etc–fish per fillet
have a naturally higher content of mercury than
smaller fish ) rich salt water.