Right now, the EPA and NOAA consider fish farms to have essentially no negative effect on wild fish.

Right now, the EPA and NOAA are smoking crack.....

The Wild Fish Conservancy has sent a 60-day Notice of Intent to sue the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) for violations of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) associated with the agencies’ evaluation of the harmful effects to threatened salmonids from commercial salmon farming in Puget Sound.

LINK (via:King 5)

Debate ongoing over fish farming in the Great Lakes

Michigan took a big step forward this summer in the business of fish farming. The state issued a permit to expand the Grayling Fish Hatchery more than tenfold.The hatchery raises trout for restaurants and grocery stores.

The expansion comes as interest in fish farming is growing nationwide and there is now talk of going offshore into the open waters of the Great Lakes.

LINK (via: Michigan Radio)

Salmon Tanker

To ensure that farm-raised salmon remain at peak of their freshness (read: still swimming) for whole trip to back to shore for processing, Rolls-Royce is building the world's largest mobile aquarium/meat wagon.

It has a roughly 9,800 cubic foot (3,000 cubic meter) carrying capacity, enough to pack in 450 tons of salmon into a trio of closed circuit, water-recirculating, lice-filtering holding tanks. Loading and unloading the fish is accomplished by hoovering them en mass out of their off-shore pens through 2-foot wide plastic tubes, then spewing them back out once the ship reaches shore.

LINK (via: Gizmodo)

The Costco fish is packed in a 4% salt solution

The Washington Post recently provided a top chef with a variety of wild and farmed salmon, ranging in price from $6/lb. to $20/lb., and had him prepare dishes for a table of food-snob judges. In the end, farmed salmon handily defeated the wild stuff and the Post concluded that you don’t always get what you pay for.

Judging each salmon on a scale of 1-10, the cheapo Costco fish scored the highest at 7.6. Costco also had the lowest-scoring fish on the test, as the wild coho brought up the rear with a mere 3.9 out of 10.

LINK  (via: The Consumerist)

Fish - It's What's for Dinner

The world quietly reached a milestone in the evolution of the human diet in 2011. For the first time in modern history, world farmed fish production topped beef production. The gap widened in 2012, with output from fish farming reaching a record 66 million tons, compared with production of beef at 63 million tons. And 2013 may well be the first year that people eat more fish raised on farms than caught in the wild.

LINK (via: EcoWatch)

Absolutely Not Kosher

The Norwegian aquaculture industry has received EU authorization to use offal in fish feed. Translation? Farmed salmon can now legally be fed on the waste byproducts from pigs and chickens.

Yummy!

LINK