SalmoFan ®

Early last year, I learnt about the SalmoFan ® during a class lesson and had been spreading the news about the risk in consuming too much Salmon, despite the popular fish's high protein, low fat and high Omega-3 fatty acid contents.

Industry's response to an ever-increasing demand for salmon and especially the ORANGEY-PINK salmon leads to major chemical companies synthetically producing shades of orangey-pink coloring from petrochemicals for salmon farms. Farmed salmons unlike the wild salmons are unable to forage naturally, causing their flesh to give an insipid, unappealing grey color which few consumers would choose. In order to produce a nice pinkish color, artificial coloring is added into the feed of farmed salmonid fish, a process also known as "color finishing". Thus the evolution of the industry standard SalmoFan ® as a conventional tool used by Salmon Farmers to decide what shade of pink they would like their Salmon to be at time of slaughter. The color selection is made and the corresponding level of colorance is then added to feed. It's scary to think so since farmed salmon outnumber wild salmon 85:1, accordingly to the National Geographic [4].

With humans messing around with our food, it is no wonder that we are getting more and more allergy to our own food. So what's next?

Source (retrieved Sept 6th, 2007) :
1. Buyer Beware: Something Fishy about Farm Raised Salmon
2. Wikipedia - Salmon
3. Linda Joyce Forristal (2003), Is Something Fishy Going on?
4. National Geographic : Everyone loves Atlantic Salmon. Here's the Catch...