Help with a project: Farm raised seafood vs wild caught - your thoughts.

[Wol4ine]

Re: Help with a project: Farm raised seafood vs wild caught - your thoughts.

So what are your thoughts on Farm raised fish vs wild fish?
I used to work on a fish farm in Maine (Ellsworth area) Farmed fish are fine, as long as you purge them properly.
Do you prefer one over the other? Why?
If you are ok with farm raised fish would you be willing to pay more for it if you knew it was sustainablly raised and was also local (like it was harvested shipped to your market live and is still alive in the tanks ready for you to buy it all within a few hours)?
I, like most everyone else, would buy the cheaper trout in a side by side comparison. Have you ever harvested and shipped live, adult fish? I don't think that is really an option.
Would you be willing to pay more for the same fish if they have better nutritional value (IE higher omega-3 content)
How often do you eat fish?
I eat fish once a week. It's normally Tilapia or HSB.
Do you view fish as a luxury food, a regular source of protein in the same lines as beef or poultry, "brain food" etc?
I would consider Shrimp or lobster 'luxury food'. Not so much fish.
Any other thoughts?

;The farm I worked at raised Atlantic Salmon. We would take the smolts out to the pens and then bring them back when the were big enough to harvest for cleaning. Seals and sea lice were the worst problems. Then the farm was sold and we switched to raising Arctic Char (relative of Brook Trout and Lake Trout) We didn't have to grow them in the sea pens so a lot of problems were eliminated right there. As long as we graded the fish and maintained proper densities we avoided any diseases. Unfortunately the new owners were crooks and the place went bankrupt in a couple of years. The University of Maine bought the property and now uses it for Aquaculture research.

[Carter]

Re: Help with a project: Farm raised seafood vs wild caught - your thoughts.

Any reason?

I just think the flavor and quality of the meat is superior. I try to find stuff that's wild caught in a sustainable manner.

[Proud2baLaker]

Re: Help with a project: Farm raised seafood vs wild caught - your thoughts.

As a Maine boy, heard many tales of farm raised fish. Most of them not good. First off,like factory farms, lots of chemicals used to keep them alive in the pens. Antibiotics, pesticides etc. Not good as far as I'm concerned. All kinds of seafood is farm raised here for awhile Atlantic salmon were huge, they floated these huge pens in the bays in Downeast Maine, lots of diseases, not just for the farm raised fish but for other creatures that happened to live there also.

Interesting thing to note here. In the US, the use of antibiotics, pesticides and what not is tightly controlled. And in most cases, they simply are not used. Many of the developed countries that raise fish (US and Europe) have actually found that just being better about the way they stock fish in the pens and being more proactive in watching for disease is better than ever using antibiotics. By seletcing the right location for a pen, stocking the right density being careful on feeding rates etc. we can end up with higher yields than we ever did by using antibiotics. In terms of like waste from the fish, if the pen is placed in the right location it is a very small problem (deep water). If the water is not deep enough some farmers will begin raising mussels nearby which feed by filtering the phytoplankton and algae that may bloom as a result from the increased nitrogen in the area from fish waste. Disease was a major problem in the Atlantic salmon industry in Chile and they paid the price by seeing their industry shrink heavily. Good aquaculturists quickly learn that being proactive and smart in their farm planning and management will mean rarely having to worry about disease.

Edit: The sea lice thing probably came down to poor management. If they had been more careful they probably never would have had that problem.

Edit 2: I have a copy of a book that lists the few drugs and therapuetics that are approved for fish (likely a very small number when compared to the number that are approved for terrestrial livestock). All have gone through the normal FDA approval process and have strict useage guidelines for their use and have been tested to be sure that there are no effects on people who may consume a treated fish. Couldn't tell you what is done in other countries (a good reason to by US farm raised fish over stuff from overseas). But it still comes down to us getting better at raising the fish in general to the point where we rarely have to use drugs.

[walrus]

Re: Help with a project: Farm raised seafood vs wild caught - your thoughts.

As a Maine boy, heard many tales of farm raised fish. Most of them not good. First off,like factory farms, lots of chemicals used to keep them alive in the pens. Antibiotics, pesticides etc. Not good as far as I'm concerned. All kinds of seafood is farm raised here for awhile Atlantic salmon were huge, they floated these huge pens in the bays in Downeast Maine, lots of diseases, not just for the farm raised fish but for other creatures that happened to live there also. I can remember working at a lobster dock, the guy buys lobsters, sells fuel, bait, gloves to the lobster man, when an old state ferry came in from the pens in Machias bay. Plastic totes of dead salmon, the harbor turned red(blood) when they off loaded the totes. The lobster dealer had an enclosed area where he stored shedder(soft shells) lobsters until winter when they turned into hard shell, he got a better price for them in February. He hated that blood as he wasn't sure what it would do his lobster pound.

Oh Yeah in the end Sea Lice ended up killing off most of the salmon pens, done gone

I have a neighbor who raises Oysters in the Bagaduce river, he just got a contract with Carnival cruises lines for 1 million oysters a year. He raises 7 million a year and sells to some of the most expensive Restaurants in the world

[Proud2baLaker]

Re: Help with a project: Farm raised seafood vs wild caught - your thoughts.

Definitely prefer wild.

Any reason?

[Carter]

Re: Help with a project: Farm raised seafood vs wild caught - your thoughts.

Definitely prefer wild.

[JF_Gophers]

Re: Help with a project: Farm raised seafood vs wild caught - your thoughts.

My only thought on it is that if it weren't for farm raised fish, there'd probably be more than a few extinct tasty species right now.

I enjoy farm raised beef, pork, and chicken products. Bring on the farm raised fish!

[ExileOnDaytonStreet]

Re: Help with a project: Farm raised seafood vs wild caught - your thoughts.

My only thought on it is that if it weren't for farm raised fish, there'd probably be more than a few extinct tasty species right now.

[Proud2baLaker]

Ok foodies and other folks. I have a few questions for you. I am currently working on my PhD studying fish nutirtion and physiology in the aquaculture setting. My research (as well as most of the research in my lab) involves trying to develop new feeds and feeding strategies for aquaulture that will not only result in good growth and performance for the fish but in a quality product for the consumer. At the same time we are trying to reduce reliance on marine feedstuffs and increase the sustainability of the aquacutlure industry (which worldwide produces over half of all seafood consumed by humans). For example, right now I am doing studies on using alternative sources of energy (fat) in rainbow trout diets, coupled with an alternative feeding strategy that will hopefully reduce our reliance on marine derived feedstuffs (fish oil) while still producing a quality fillet for the consumers. Preliminary results have shown that using the right alternative oil source and being selective about when we use the alternative and when we use fish oil, we can still produce a fillet that has either the same amount or slightly more good Omega-3 fatty acids (DHA especially) than if we just used fish oil the whole time. The levels in the fillet of these farm raised fish would be similar to those that are wild caught as well. This same strategy can be applied to pretty much any farm raised fish. We have decided that we need to take a closer look at the economics of this alternative strategy as well as how these farm raised fish might be perceived compared to both traditional farm raised fish and wild fish. I will be creating and conducting a survey that I will be spreading around in the future but before I can do that I was hoping that you might be able to help me by giving me some of your thoughts on this. It may help me to develop some of my questions once I have an idea what people think.

So what are your thoughts on Farm raised fish vs wild fish?
Do you prefer one over the other? Why?
If you are ok with farm raised fish would you be willing to pay more for it if you knew it was sustainablly raised and was also local (like it was harvested shipped to your market live and is still alive in the tanks ready for you to buy it all within a few hours)?
Would you be willing to pay more for the same fish if they have better nutritional value (IE higher omega-3 content)
How often do you eat fish?
Do you view fish as a luxury food, a regular source of protein in the same lines as beef or poultry, "brain food" etc?
Any other thoughts?

You dont have to answer all those questions or any of them. Just give me your thoughts and maybe I can help clear some things up for you at the same time (a lot of people are misinformed about farm raised seafood and seafood in general). Hopefully this will help me begin to develop some questions for my survey based on the kinds of things you say.

Oh and I will say this. At a recent conference of food science educators I served some of my rainbow trout in a blind taste test. The people who participated were convinced that they would be able to tell the difference between the traditional farm raised fish and those I did on the alternative strategy. Not only could most of them NOT tell the difference, most either ended up prefering the alternative fish or felt that both were eqaully good. The same thing happend with hybrid stripped bass when we took them to a culinary school in Chicago.