Toxic Threats to Farmed Fish Food

Science reported that a worldwide assessment of the threat to the salmon market as a whole can be answered by the 13 persistent organic pollutants, including PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), known as one of the most toxic and environmentally persistent chemicals ever created.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) notes that PCBs (and there are dozens of trade names for them) don’t break down, can remain for long periods cycling between air, water and soil, travel long distances and can be taken up into the bodies of small organisms and fish.

“Studies in humans support evidence for potential carcinogenic and noncarcinogenic effects of PCBs,” it notes, but the list of potential health problems for humans and animals is frankly staggering. Sure, industries are now being regulated to more stringent laws, but once it’s out there, trying to take it back is no longer possible. The EPA site details a list of life-altering and hair-raising consequences PCBs can cause or impact:

Cancer	Immune system
Reproductive system	Nervous system
Endocrine system	Neurological effects

Keep in mind that PCBs are only one of many pollutants associated with farmed fish. One of the most treacherous is ethoxyquin, a chemical developed by Monsanto in the 1950s as a synthetic tire chemical. Ethoxyquin is found only in farmed salmon — not in wild.

It’s used as a rubber stabilizer, pesticide, preservative and antioxidant all in one, and is a suspected carcinogen that “caused chromosomal aberrations, holes and fractures in chromosomes” of human cells and “was chemically toxic, destroyed chromosomes and DNA,” according to a Norwegian newspaper review.

Because it prevents fat oxidation, it’s used in some animal feeds, including fish food. According to Nutraceutical Business Review, the European Food Safety Authority’s description of the chemical was pretty clear: Ethoxyquin is “considered to be toxic to aquatic organisms based on the acute toxicity data provided for fish, daphnia and algae.”

Article Source: Dr Mercola at Mercola.com  

The Trouble with Eating Fish Today

Since then, setbacks have varied: Farmed salmon production exceeded the amount of wild-caught salmon in 1999; nearly 3 million Atlantic salmon reportedly escaped from farms in British Columbia, Washington, Maine and Scotland in 2001, the same year infectious salmon anemia forced Maine salmon farmers to slaughter over 1 million fish.

From the traces of illegal antibiotics found in an Asian shrimp farm in 2002 to the gross violations of the Clean Water Act in a Maine-based salmon farm in 2003, and certainly the toxicology tests revealing farmed salmon to be one of the most toxic foods in the world — more than five times more toxic than any other food tested — clearly the industry as a whole has some explaining to do.

The guidelines for clean-eating seafood are the same for everyone as they are outlined for pregnant moms: Fresh-caught Alaskan salmon, sardines, mackerel, herring and anchovies are your best bets in regard to healthiest seafood. Some people might think farmed fish must be the healthiest and most environmentally responsible choice, but in many respects, fish farming, aka aquacultured fisheries, aren’t much different from the land-loving CAFOs — concentrated animal feeding operations.

One of the worst problems is salmon pens placed next to wild salmon runs, which seriously threatens the viability of wild-caught salmon, especially since the farmed variety are often carrying diseases such as infectious salmon anemia virus, and that’s just one of several.

Article Source: Dr Mercola at Mercola.com