Is there such a thing as organic fish? Surely all fish comes from the sea and eats whatever fish eat? How can we control that?

As far as I know, fish caught in the wild cannot be marketed as organic in the UK. However, several supermarkets and many independent organic retailers now stock organic trout and salmon produced in fish farms. Several types of farmed mussels and shellfish are also likely to become more widely available in the future.

In organic fish farming, many of the pesticides, dyes and antibiotics widely used in conventional fish farming are not permitted and so these fish products are generally accepted to be credible organic products by both the soil association and consumers.

However, from an animal welfare point of view, there is some controversy about allowing farmed fish to be labelled as organic. Organic principles demand that livestock (which includes fish) should be able to express its ‘natural’ behaviour pattern and be kept as close to natural stocking densities as possible. How can this be when they are kept in cages in either inland or in fish farms out at sea?

The true cost of fish farming

Fish farming seems like a practical solution to the problem of overfishing. Fish farming, however, is the cause of many problems. In the UK, its salmon thats most closely associated with farming – and its shortcomings. Public demand for cheaper food means that farmed salmon are often kept, for financial reasons, very densely stocked, with huge numbers of fish crammed into very little space. In this state, the fish can more easily become diseased, and these diseases can spread to wild fish. Huge amounts of antibiotics are required to keep the fish moderately healthy. Also a confidential study for the UKs top organic body highlighted gaps between its principles and the standards it accepted, BBC Newsnight reported.

Is organic fish sustainable?

Other problems are escapes, when farmed fish interbreed with wild fish and potentially weaken wild stocks, as well as pollution to the water and seabed around fish farms. Farmed salmon, which are carnivorous, eat three times their body weight in fish feed, which is made from other fish – not the best use of resources from an environmental point of view.

We all know that adding fish to our diets can help increase our body’s ability to repair itself, as well as its ability to burn body fat and keep our energy up, but it’s important to choose fish that’s also going to improve your health as opposed to silently poisoning you…

Being exposed to too much mercury can cause memory loss, tremors, neurological difficulties, advanced aging, decreased immune functions, and death.

But how is all this mercury getting into our body?

Well here are the top 4 places that contribute to the levels of mercury in our body (not in any specific order):

Vaccines (past and present)
Dental fillings
The environment
And Fish

We’re going to focus on fish right now because that’s the prime source of mercury in our diets.

When coal is burned, inorganic mercury is released into the air and eventually ends up in our lakes, rivers and oceans. There, bacteria mixes with it and transforms it into methylmercury which is easily absorbed by fish (especially large or fatty fish), and is also easily absorbed by us when we eat those fish.

The good new is that our most recent studies indicate that the human body naturally rids itself of mercury over time – assuming we stop ingesting it long enough for our body to do what it was made to do, and to help the process here’s a list of fish that naturally have a low, medium and high level of mercury:

High mercury: Mercury levels differ from one species of fish to the next. This is due to factors such as type of fish, size, location, habitat, diet and age. Fish that are predatory (eat other fish) are large and at the top of the food chain, and so tend to contain more mercury. Fish that contain higher levels of mercury include:

Shark
Ray
Swordfish
Barramundi
Gemfish
Orange roughy
Ling
Canned or fresh tuna
Mackerel
Grouper
Tilefish
Chilean sea bass

Moderate mercury: Alaskan halibut, black cod, blue (Gulf Coast) crab, dungeness crab, Eastern oysters, mahimahi, blue mussels, pollack.

Low mercury: Anchovies, Arctic char, crawfish, Pacific flounder, herring, king crab, sanddabs, scallops, Pacific sole; tilapia, wild Alaska and Pacific salmon; farmed catfish, clams, striped bass, and sturgeon.

Salmon is one of the most versatile fish we can buy, and despite its longstanding reputation as a luxury fish, is nowadays surprisingly affordable.

Salmon are available in both farmed and wild varieties, and while the wild salmon has the edge in terms of both flavour and texture, the quality of the farmed fish has improved greatly over the years and is now a fish that makes thoroughly respectable eating. The comparative rarity of wild salmon, which is only available for half the year between February and August, is at least as responsible as quality for the higher prices it commands compared to its farmed cousins.

Most of the wild salmon you can buy will be from the Atlantic Ocean, both off the shores of North America and Northern Europe, with Scotland being an especially famed source of the fish. Salmon can also be found in the Pacific, although these fish tend to find their way into cans rather than the wet fish counter of your local fishmonger.

An enduring image of wild salmon is of a sleek silver arch of fish leaping up weirs and waterfalls, and this arises because they are are born in freshwater, but spend most of their lives in the sea after migrating while young. They will stay in the sea for between one and four years, before returning to the very same river they were born in to spawn, which is usually their last act before expiring from the exhaustion of the journey upstream.

Farmed salmon, in contrast, spend their entire lives in lochs or river estuaries, swimming in net cages, sometimes at densities higher than is healthy for the fish. Fish farming has gathered something of a bad reputation over the years, and it’s true that salmon farms once showed a similar disregard for animal welfare that you’d find in most industrialized farming operations. In recent years, though, public opinion has forced a rethink, and standards have widely improved – you can even find organic farmed fish these days.

When you come to buy salmon, the usual rules for buying fish apply. Make sure you can see a whole fish so that you can get an idea of how fresh it is – the pre-wrapped anonymous fillets packaged in a ‘protective atmosphere’ you find in many supermarkets is a gamble at best. A fresh fish will have bulging eyes rather than sunken ones, will feel firm to the touch, and should not smell ‘fishy’ as this indicates that it is past its best.

Depending on how many you are feeding, you can buy a steak which is cut from the shoulder of the fish, a fillet from nearer the tail end, or even a whole fish. Tail end fillets possibly offer the best eating, as they are more or less free of bones apart from the pin bones which can easily be removed during preparation. Steaks, however, are a more meaty cut and are perhaps more suited to cooking methods such as a barbecue or grill.

Whichever cut you buy, you can be assured that your health will benefit – as an oily fish, salmon is high in Omega 3, which has been shown to be of use in preventing heart problems, and is widely believed to be helpful for brain and nervous system development and operation.

Enjoy your salmon!