Ireland: Fish farm escape highlights questions for consumers

When buying or eating salmon, the question “is it farmed or wild?” is frequently asked. But the days are long gone when wild salmon was widely available in Irish fish shops, on supermarket shelves or restaurant menus. The product nowadays is invariable farmed in Ireland, with an increasing trend of being labelled as “organically farmed salmon”. This can be a source of controversy given circumstances in which the fish are reared. The presence of farmed salmon imported from Scotland, Norway or the Faroe Islands, however, is increasingly evident – though it might be labelled as Irish on the basis of being processed or smoked here. Irish farmed salmon are reared in large open cages, containing many thousands of fish, invariably located in shallow seawater or harbours – and concentrated along the western seaboard. What is involved in producing ‘organically farmed salmon’? Producing organically-farmed salmon, for the most part, means less density in cages (ie fewer fish); less use of ...