Book and Podcast: “Salmon Wars ~ The Dark Underbelly of our Favorite Fish”

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VIDEO/PODCAST/BOOK. From “Books on Pod” with Trey Elling.

 

Investigative journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins chats with Trey Elling about SALMON WARS: THE DARK UNDERBELLY OF OUR FAVORITE FISH.

Topics include: 0:00

Intro 0:49

The genesis of this book 3:04

How the farmed salmon industry is like Big Tobacco and Big Ag rolled into one 5:27

How embedded farmed salmon is in our food supply 7:16

Properly labelling seafood 8:21

The evolution of commercial salmon farming 9:51

The Canadian government’s role in the rise in that country’s open-net farms in the 1980s 13:39 Norway’s Hydro Seafood and its role in expanding salmon farming 16:19

Sea lice and their damage on farmed salmon 18:15

The dangers of farmed salmon escaping back into the wild 19:30

The concern around Cypermethrin for fish and humans 23:30

Alexandra Morton as a hero in this terrifying story 25:36

How the farmed salmon industry responds to scientific findings critical of their business 27:15

The right way to farm salmon 30:54

The reliability of a store claiming its fish is wild caught 32:32

Comparing Omega 3 levels in farmed- vs wild salmon 36:43

Why salmon farmers add dye to the chemical pellets they feed their fish 37:50

What Canada’s Cohen Commission uncovered about dwindling wild salmon populations 41:10

Whether Norway does a good job of protecting its salmon 43:19

The added issue of salmon farm litter 44:40

An ecological disaster perpetuated by Cook Aquaculture in 2017 57:56

The Miramichi River as a reason for optimism in the fight for wild salmon 49:41

Whether Doug and Catherine are concerned about industry pushback.

 

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins have written books together about topics ranging from Disney’s planned utopia in Florida and the Holocaust at sea to nuclear weapons trafficking. None was more important than Salmon Wars, an urgent plea for consumers and governments to respond to the health and environmental consequences resulting from the industrialization of Atlantic salmon.

Frantz spent 37 years as a newspaper editor and reporter, sharing a Pulitzer Prize at The New York Times and serving as managing editor of the Los Angeles Times. After leaving journalism, he was chief investigator for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Assistant Secretary of State in the Obama administration, and Deputy Secretary General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Collins was a reporter and prize-winning foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and contributed to The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. Upon leaving her newspaper career, she became a private investigator specializing in international financial fraud and corruption.

They began work on Salmon Wars in January 2020 after hearing about the environmental dangers of salmon farming at a public meeting near their home in Nova Scotia. In two years of intensive research that followed, they uncovered new documents illustrating the danger posed by open-net salmon farms to wild salmon and other marine life. They peeled away the industry propaganda to disclose campaigns to discredit critics and undermine environmentalists. They interviewed scientists and medical practitioners who detailed the health risks from eating farmed salmon, particularly for children and pregnant women. And, in a hopeful development, they met people trying to raise salmon in sustainable, environmentally friendly ways on land. Salmon Wars is about more than just a fish. It is about how the choices we make affect our health and the health of our oceans.

“Erin Brockovich meets Wicked Tuna in this searing exposé…. This stellar investigation is the rare one that has the power to impact policymakers and consumers alike.”

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“We have been growing crops unsustainably on the land for at least 100 years. Now we are making the same mistakes with agriculture in our oceans. The criminal multinational fishing corporations and their complicit politicians are actively harming the marine environment and pushing their toxic product to unaware consumers. After reading Salmon Wars, I doubt you will choose to eat net pen farmed salmon again.”

Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia

“Salmon Wars is a deep dive into the damage caused by current fish-farming methods to ocean environments, wild fish and their habitats, and the farmed fish themselves. It is also an account of the dismal failure of governments to stop such practices. Salmon farming needs reform. Until it gets it, read this book, and you will never eat farmed salmon again.”

Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition, food studies, and public health, emerita, at New York University and author of What to Eat

 

 

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