If you’re looking for a special way to celebrate Earth Day let me make an unexpected recommendation: buy farmed salmon. Yes, I really mean it, but you have to go to the right place.
To mark Earth Day, and the first year of their commitment to a sustainable seafood program, Overwaitea Food Group has become the first Canadian grocery chain to make sustainable farmed salmon broadly available. OFG is now the exclusive North American retailer for coho salmon sustainably farmed by SweetSpring, a land-based closed containment operation in Washington State. [Applause and whoops of excitement please.]
This isn’t an ordinary product promotion, closed containment aquaculture is a solution scientists, conservationists, and citizens that want to keep wild salmon around have been asking for, for a really long time. And now we can waltz into any OFG store (Save On Foods, Overwaitea, Price Smart, Urban Fare) and purchase sustainably-raised fish to make a delicious, guilt free salmon dinner.
You might be concerned that your true love, wild salmon, will not be happy. But closed systems separate farmed fish from wild fish to avoid the problems with waste, sea lice, disease and escapes that have been plaguing the net pen industry and threatening wild salmon for so many years.
With the rise of the net pen salmon farming industry we’ve become accustomed to being able to eat salmon everywhere, all the time—a dependency that wild salmon alone cannot support. Diversifying our palates and finding sustainable ways to raise fish and shellfish is important if we want to keep eating seafood and have healthy, abundant oceans.
So, have a happy Earth Day dinner and try out the fish that can change the salmon farming industry for the better.
Very exciting news! I believe closed containment technology has to be the future of aquaculture in BC, we can’t allow another major run to collapse (like the Fraser) or continue to put up with so much waste collecting on the bottom of the ocean. Having major retailers get on board is an important step in this process. Congrats to Overwaitea and all those who made this happen, I will be sure to support this product!
Gabe
I just heard about this salmon farm a couple of days ago. I am thrilled that closed containment can be done! Come on BC
Lets get all the farmers farming on their plots of land
Let’s feed the people with the food that’s grown with farming hands
and let’s protect our salmon and the wild fishing stands
I’m glad to hear of this and will pass it around to my brother-in-law who lives in Victoria, BC.