What are the differences between wild, organic and farmed salmon, and which should you buy? Josa Young reports on some fishy choices

At first glance
Take two salmon, one wild and one farmed: one has the lean and glossy look of a sportsman, the other looks like a fat, pasty businessman. Grasp each fish just below the tail and pick it up – the farmed salmon will slither through your hand, the wild one will stay put, its tail taut from plenty of exercise. The tail belonging to the farmed salmon has been worn away by contact with hundreds of other fish constantly rubbing against it. Look closer and you will notice black blunted scarring on the farmed salmon’s fins. This is the main visual difference between farmed and wild salmon.

Taste test
Intensively farmed salmon can be tasteless, wet and flabby in texture. The colour of the flesh is very different, too – wild salmon is a vibrant orange, some farmed salmon is a peculiar fluorescent pink. Once you’ve tasted the best wild stuff, the difference becomes so clear it’s very difficult to eat the farmed stuff again with any pleasure. However, the farmed salmon lobby would still accuse you of snobbery – and only an estimated 2% of salmon eaten in the UK is wild, a proportion dwindling year by year.

From staple to luxury – and
back again
In the 19th century, wild salmon were so plentiful in the lochs and burns that Scottish estate workers protested against having to eat it more than three times a week. In Newcastle, there was even a bye-law against it. The methods used to catch salmon, either by trapping or line-fishing did not significantly dent the population. But growing demand and increasingly polluted rivers soon led to diminishing supply.

Since the 1960s, salmon farming has been very big business, supported as it is by huge European grants aimed at reviving depressed rural areas. It seemed such a good and simple idea – conserve dwindling wild stocks by providing an alternative. But as salmon was farmed in ever-increasing numbers it started to lose its luxury status and was soon perceived as an everyday food with the added health benefits of long-chain fatty acids. But lowering the price of food by cutting corners always causes problems – and farming salmon turns out to be an environmental disaster.

Thousands of escapees from the cages interbreed with wild salmon and are thought to disrupt natural breeding patterns and behaviour. Like all factory-farmed livestock, salmon are forced to behave in a completely unnatural way. They live out their lives crowded in cages sunk into lochs or the sea with no opportunity to express their natural desire to go from salt water to fresh water to breed.

The seabed under the cages dies as it rapidly becomes polluted with effluent. The fish are covered in sea-lice as they have no opportunity to flush them off by migrating upstream into freshwater rivers to spawn, so the cages are regularly flooded with pesticides. In addition, they need to ingest possibly toxic dyes to create that desirable pink that wild salmon get from the crustaceans they eat. Dense stocking leads to infections, and the fish are vaccinated or dosed regularly with preventative antibiotics.

Organically farmed salmon
But farmed salmon is not all bad news. Last Christmas, for the first time, organically farmed salmon came on to the market. Produced under strict guidelines from the Soil Association and other regulatory bodies, organically farmed salmon is a halfway house between wild and farmed fish. It’s reared like organic livestock – with regard for its welfare and without artificial additives. Farms are carefully inspected for environmental impact and the fish for eating quality. Pesticides and routine antibiotics are banned, and the salmon can express themselves more naturally than in conventional fish farming.

Larger pens are placed further out to sea, where fewer fish have to swim in stronger tides, which also wash away the waste products. Small fish called wrasse are introduced to nibble the lice off the salmon. Artificial dyes are not allowed, and the feed is chosen to reflect a much more natural diet without any GMOs.

The flesh of organically farmed salmon is sometimes paler in colour and the cost higher, but the texture and taste can be much more satisfactory, and you do know you are not getting toxic residues.

Salmon is a source of long-chain fatty acids, which have proven health benefits – notably to the heart and to babies’ growing brains – it makes sense to choose an unpolluted source for these vital nutrients. Organically farmed salmon is expensive, but then again, what’s wrong with enjoying a bit of real luxury at Christmas or other special occasions?