Top Chefs, Grocers Choose Farmed Salmon

Even Fish Snobs Are Ordering Better-Tasting Varieties From New Sources

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Atlantic salmon in nets of a Marine Harvest salmon farm in Norway. MARINE HARVEST ASA

By 

SARAH NASSAUER

Sept. 24, 2014 7:09 p.m. ET29 COMMENTS

Farmed salmon is becoming the surprise darling of top chefs and food-loving home cooks.

The pink fatty fish has long been dismissed as environmentally harmful, chemical-laden or simply not that tasty by many fish lovers. Now farmed salmon producers are courting high-end chefs and improving some aspect of how they farm to win over naysayers.

Restaurants from Red Lobster to New York's revered Le Bernardin say they must have some version of salmon on menus.

"It's the chicken of the sea," says Eric Ripert, co-owner and executive chef at Le Bernardin where a prix fixe seafood dinner is $135 a person. The restaurant splits the difference, serving farmed at lunch and wild for dinner, says Mr. Ripert. He prefers the clean, sea-like taste of wild, but his lunch menu's lower price can't support it, he says.

Whole Foods Market Inc. cut the number of farmed salmon suppliers it worked with to three from about eight in 2007 when it instituted rigid environmental and quality standards for its farmed fish. The grocer is now back up to five suppliers and plans to add more soon, says David Pilat, global seafood coordinator for Whole Foods Market. A blog post about farmed salmon on the grocer's website starts, "MYTH: All fish farming is bad."

Salmon has been a tricky topic for chefs and shoppers who keep the environment in mind at the seafood counter. Fresh, never frozen, wild salmon is primarily a seasonal product, caught in the summer months. It has a complex flavor beloved by chefs and often clear sustainability credentials. Alaskan wild salmon, protected by that state's laws, is widely considered one of the most sustainable fishing areas in the world.

Farmed Vs. Wild

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F. MARTIN RAMIN/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, STYLING BY ANNE CARDENAS (PHOTO ILLUSTRATION)

Farmed salmon has mass appeal. It is often less expensive, fattier, and available year round.

While U.S. seafood consumption overall is falling because fish is expensive compared with other protein sources such as chicken, salmon is becoming more popular and farmed is leading the charge. Both farmed and wild salmon have a rich flavor and healthy omega-3 fatty acids, which attract diet-conscious diners.

Farmed seafood, broadly, is becoming a larger part of the global seafood diet, now eaten on average nearly as often as wild. In the U.S., most shrimp, salmon and tilapia are farmed and imported.

Criticism of farmed salmon in the U.S. has been intense partly because Alaska is home to one of the largest wild sources of the fish and it holds a hallowed place on many restaurant menus.

Still, farmed salmon is needed to meet booming global demand for protein, says Ola Brattvoll, chief operating officer of sales and marketing at Bergen, Norway-based Marine Harvest, the largest farmed salmon company globally.

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Net pens at Marine Harvest salmon farm in Norway are submerged in ocean water. MARINE HARVEST ASA

Having won over the masses, the farmed salmon industry has recently set its sights on the fish elite, those chefs and environmentalists who have resisted the rise of salmon aquaculture. Though prices shift, wild salmon typically costs about $10 more a pound than the farmed variety.

About four years ago Grieg Seafood B.C., a midsize farmed salmon producer in British Columbia, Canada decided to target top chefs with a premium brand. After surveying chefs around North America, the company created Skuna Bay.

To appeal to chefs looking for consistency and an ingredient that doesn't hurt the environment, the company started growing fewer fish in each of its open water pens, says Dave Mergle, manager and director of marketing for Skuna Bay.

Less crowding cuts down on diseases and parasites, reducing the need to douse fish in chemicals, he says. Skuna Bay also hired design firms to create a logo and slick website, he says.

Skuna Bay salmon aren't grown separately from Grieg's other fish, but picked for their quality and shipped out to restaurants in branded sealed boxes, he says. Chefs' approval can influence the wider public, says Mr. Mergle.

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A barge monitors and pumps feed to salmon in net pens at Marine Harvest farm in Norway. MARINE HARVEST ASA

Chef Rick Moonen put farmed salmon on his menus at RM Seafood and RX Boiler Room in the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas for the first time in over a decade after being courted by producer True North. True North wanted a "chef ambassador" to smooth any worries about farmed salmon and teach people to cook it, says Andrew Lively, director of marketing at True North Salmon Co., the premium salmon brand of Cooke Aquaculture Inc., one of the largest farmed fish companies in North America.

Mr. Moonen is paid by True North and now posts about its salmon on social media, and he lists it by name on menus. True North and Mr. Moonen declined to discuss specifics.

The company has reduced the amount of wild fish needed to produce farmed salmon, says Mr. Moonen.

Most farmed salmon is still a concern for people and ocean life, environmentalists say. Often salmon farms raise fish in open water "net pens," use antibiotics to fight disease and pesticides to kill sea lice, a common farmed salmon parasite. Those chemicals go directly into the water and it isn't well understood how they may impact other sea life or human health.

Salmon that escape from farms' nets could affect the genetic makeup of the wild population in some regions, says Peter Bridson, aquaculture program manager at Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch, an organization that hands out well-followed rankings on seafood sustainability.

The "net pen system has remained largely the same for 20 years," says Mr. Bridson.

But there have been recent improvements in salmon farming. Almost all producers are using less wild fish to feed farmed salmon, a worry for scientists concerned about overfishing.

Technology is improving the still less than 50-year-old industry. Expensive land tank systems prevent fish from escaping and cut down on disease because clean water is always filtering through.

Whole Foods buys all of its farmed salmon for Midwest stores from a land-based salmon farmer in Iceland, says Mr. Pilat of Whole Foods.

Another farm uses a genetically modified yeast that has omega-3 fatty acids as a replacement for some wild fish in feed. Consumers still confused at the fish counter might get a bit more help soon.

The Aquaculture Stewardship Council has begun certifying several types of farmed fish with environmental impact and other issues in mind, similar to the labels that already appear on wild fish from the Marine Stewardship Council.

Some fish favorites in grocery stores already have the logo, including salmon, tilapia, and pangasius, a type of farmed river catfish produced mostly in Asia and often sold as catfish in the U.S.

The council is still reviewing other types of farms, including shrimp, the most often eaten seafood in the U.S., most of it farmed and imported.