GALWAY, Ireland (dpa) – The fish delicacy salmon has become increasingly popular throughout Europe, as shown by one simple statistics: Nowadays, ten times as much salmon is consumed as was the case just ten years ago.
Yet the fish also is becoming a cheap mass-produced item: Nine of ten salmon now come from huge breeding farms, which in the controversy surrounding them have made salmon become derisively dubbed the “pig of the seas”.But now there is an alternative – albeit a more costly – method for raising salmon, as Ireland is showing in its stringent, ecologically compatible bio-produced salmon.A few years ago, number of European companies and their Irish partners set up the first, and until recently the only in the world – bio-salmon farm.“Our fish are characterised above all by the low fat content, by the proportions true to the species, by the most natural breeding methods possible and by quick on the spot processing,” says company director David Baird, who with his bio-salmon farm is the biggest employer on the island of Clare.The facility consists of three huge cages made of nets, stretching for a few kilometres off the barren Atlantic coastline of western Ireland. Several thousand salmon swim about in depths of up to 25 metres. Two fishing cutters are at anchor and the fish are pulled out of the water. A handful of yellow-clade workers slaughter the silvey wriggling catch.Half the trick is in the right timing. The Atlantic salmon should be harvested before it reaches sexual maturity. Before the salmon are permitted to go swimming in the net cages, the breeders have cleverly circumvented Nature’s methods.The non-genetically manipulated salmon are first bred in fresh waters along the southern and northern Irish coastlines and for the first 12 months grow up in an environment which little by little accustoms them to salt water. Then, trucks or helicopters carry the salmon schools to the bio-farm at Clare Island.Less than one hour after being captured and slaughtered, the western Irish bio-salmon is already on land and being processed at a factory. Rubber-gloved workers gut the fish, weigh them and pack them by the half-dozen in boxes.Within 48 hours, the three-to-four-kilogram fish have made their way from Clare Island’s waters to the European continent’s fish shops.Despite the quality and size of the fish, Baird says that for the customer what is above all important is the colour of the meat.“Salmon must be evenly reddish in colour. That is immensely important to people,” he says. Norwegian salmon gets its colour from feed enriched with carotins, while bio-salmon gets the colour from fish meal – something which critics, despite ecological groups’ arguments to the contrary – say merely makes the bio-salmon equally a mass-produced caged animal.All the same, each Clare Island Farm salmon is given an ecological seal of approval and control number.The biological breeding method is comparatively more expensive and the number of ocean-sited cages still low.“We still have to improve the fish numbers in Clare Island,” says Joe O’Sshea, head of the Irish Seafood Producers Group which represents about 75 per cent of the some 1,700 employees in Ireland’s fishing industry.Ireland accounts for just three per cent of worldwide salmon trade. Of today’s world demand of around 600,000 tons, Norway as the leader in salmon breeding farms covers 350,000 tons. Fish from the Norwegian fjords is above all meant for the Japanese, who prefer salmon with a higher fat content for their favourite sushi dish.The Norwegians have converted salmon breeding into a successful enterprise, investing in the most modern production facilities and introducing new processing methods.But success on the salmon market also has a downside for the Scandinavians: in the densely-populated cages, the fish lethargically try to cope with increasing numbers of viruses, bacilla and parasites.Though the Norwegians are working to improve their breeding methods, consumer groups charge that they are using incompatible turbo-feeds and breeding overly fat fish which are also treated with large amounts of chemical medications.This is where the bio-salmon producers see an opportunity. Just recently a further farm operating under strict ecological guidelines went into operation in Scotland, and a biofarm is also planned for southern Ireland and Joe O’Shea sees a further niche in the market ahead.