The Costliest Part of Feeding Farmed Salmon: A Pill That Turns Them Pink
Shoppers detest gray fillets, so producers rely on pigmentation pellets to achieve the natural orange hues found in the wild. So distinctive is salmons orangey-pink hue that Crayola named a crayon after it . Its an accurate representation of the flesh of wild salmon, but not that of farmed salmon, whose meat is naturally gray. Or at least, it would be, if salmon farmers didnt spike their artificial diet with pink-ifying pellets. Wild salmon get their ruddy shade by eating krill and shrimp, which contain a reddish-orange compound called astaxanthin. (That shrimp-heavy diet is also what turns flamingos pink.) The spectrum varies with the species : Since Alaskas sockeye salmon are closer to the Bering Seas teeming krill, theyre the reddest of all. Salmon further southCoho, king, and pink, for instanceeat relatively less krill and shrimp, giving them a lighter orange hue. Like their wild cousins, farmed salmon come in a spectrum of pinks and oranges, depending on diet. But its the farmersnot the food chainwho determine the salmons color. Since farm-raised salmon live in a pen, theyre fed kibble made from a hodgepodge that might include the oil and flesh of smaller fish (e.g. herring and anchovies), corn gluten, ground-up feathers, soybeans, chicken fat, and genetically engineered yeast. An essential ingredient in these pellets is astaxanthin. Sometimes its made naturally through algae or pulverized crustaceans; other manufacturers synthesize the compound in a lab, using petrochemicals. While astaxanthin provides the salmon with some of the vitamins and antioxidants theyd get in the wild, salmon health isnt the selling point. Its the pigmenting, to use feed industry parlance, that really matters, letting salmon farmers determine how red their fillets will be. (Thanks to a 2003 lawsuit, they have to alert customers to the fact of added coloring.) To facilitate that selection process, pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-LaRoche developed a set of standardized color cards to measure huewhich is now known as the DSM SalmoFan . (Dutch multinational DSM acquired it in 2002). Wild salmonwhich is tastier, more nutritious, and can cost two to three times as much as farmed salmon (which is usually $6 to $10 per pound)serves as the aesthetic standard as well. Research by DSM, now one of the biggest astaxanthin makers, shows wealthy shoppers go for darker-hued salmon , which fetch up to $1 per pound more than lighter shadessomething other industry research suggests as well. One study found farmed salmon colored lower than 23 on the SalmoFan's scale to be difficult to sell at any price . Pigmenting supplements are the most expensive component of the farmed salmon diet, constituting up to 20 percent of feed costs . But it boosts profitability. And while creating a product that fetches prices approaching those of wild-caught salmon, farmers can still churn out fillets at an industrial clip. That often makes things harder on the Pacific Northwest fishermen whose catch theyre trying to emulate. An abundance of farmed salmon forces fishermen to lower prices of their wild-caught salmon in order to compete . The fact that consumers will shell out more for salmon that looks wildeven if it got that way by eating pellets in its penhints that people want to be eating wild salmon, but not quite badly enough to buy the real deal. If its price thats keeping consumers from buying wild-caught salmon, they might want to consider saving a few bucks more and start demanding farmers cut out those expensive pigmentsand sell them salmon thats gray.