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Answer this: who benefits from
the salmon scare?
Magnus Linklater
Reproduced from The Times, Thursday 15 January
with kind permission
Filed 16 Jan 04
www.land-care.org.uk
This is the true story of the salmon scare
which threatened last weekend to bring British salmon farming to
its knees. It is a sorry saga of flawed science, selective research
and hidden commercial bias. That it was allowed into the pages of
the apparently respectable journal Science is inexplicable. Its
worldwide promotion by an organisation with a vested interest in
undermining farmed Atlantic salmon in favour of the wild Alaskan
variety is a scandal. Its central claim, that farmed Atlantic salmon
have higher levels of pollutants than wild ones, is simply unproven,
since the report itself concedes that it never actually examined
wild Atlantic salmon. That a British expert could nevertheless describe
the report as “definitive” is dumbfounding.
The report hit the headlines on Friday with
a vengeance. Based on a worldwide survey of salmon bought in supermarkets
in March 2002, it said that fish raised in Britain and other Northern
European countries were so contaminated with carcinogenic chemicals
that consumers would be unwise to eat them more than six times a
year. It said that their chemical levels broke guidelines set by
the US Environmental Protection Agency and greatly outweighed any
of the health advantages associated with eating fish. It had the
immediate effect of stalling salmon sales and threatening the already
fragile fish farming industry in Scotland.
Here are the facts: the survey was conducted by
the Institute for Health and the Environment at the State University
of New York at Albany, whose scientists are respected and respectable.
It was financed, however, by the immensely wealthy, Philadelphia-based
Pew Charitable Trusts, which campaigns actively on global pollution,
and which believes in direct intervention against industries that
it regards as hostile to the environment. Pew challenges logging
companies and air polluters, all legitimate targets, but it has
also succeeded in shutting down the long-line fishing industry in
the Pacific, in order to protect sea turtles, has curtailed the
fishing of Alaskan pollock, which was said to threaten sea lions,
and has now turned its sights on Atlantic farmed salmon. According
to The New York Times: “With its deep pockets and aggressive
political advocacy, Pew is not only the most important new player,
but the most controversial” on the environmental scene.
David Carpenter, one of the scientists who conducted
the research, was remarkably frank about his funders. While insisting
that his own work was purely scientific, he said of the Pew Charitable
Trusts: “There may be some legitimacy in saying the reason
they chose to fund this study was that they had another agenda well
beyond the health effects.” His interview, published on the
IntraFish website, is worth reading, as are the details of the way
the fish were bought. It emerges that salmon were purchased in Britain
before new labelling laws, requiring their source to be identified,
were introduced. Thus there was no absolute guarantee that they
were wild or farmed. Dr Carpenter confessed he was “unaware”
that wild salmon were still on sale in Europe. “If we had been
able to get wild Atlantic salmon we would have tested them,”
he said.
Both Pew, and the David Suzuki Foundation, a Canadian
environmental organisation which campaigns on behalf of Alaskan
wild salmon fishing, immediately published the results of the institute’s
survey on their websites, with approving headlines. This was not
just another Science report, to be picked up or not by sharp-eyed
correspondents. It was put out around the world in a press release
from the international PR organisation, Gavin Anderson, which confirmed
that its client was the institute itself, but refused to say where
the funding had come from.
So there we have it. Instead of an independent
study from an internationally accepted source, this was a survey
with a clearly defined political agenda, funded by a powerful organisation
which would be delighted to see fish farms closed down altogether.
That is the kind of thing I would like to have known before I read
the headlines. And so, I imagine, would the British consumer.
Magnus Linklater
Times Columnist
Further Reading Recommended by Land-Care
 Solholm,
Rolleiv (2004). Salmon export not affected by research scare
See FOOD Homepage, filed 15 Jan 04, www.land-care.org.uk
Click
Here to View
Linklater, Magnus (2004). Spreading salmon scare stories
See FOOD Homepage, filed 12 Jan 04, www.land-care.org.uk
Click
Here to View
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