RobBob

I just peed myself.

This is precisely why I won't bring mine to pubclub...and no erik, you can't have pictures of her, so don't bother PMing for them!

but I'm not goin, sukka

My high school has its 25th reunion coming up. I've scouted around on the email addresses from correspondence, and I have concluded that the turnout will be 80% goofs.

but I thought they were genetically modified sockeyes

babnik, your book reports suk.

damn, this thread is a lot more fun than that salmon one...

It WAS a good article BTW, and not slanted for or against

I give up then.

bullshit babnik. the 'problem' is population growth throughout the 3W.

And I condemn them for distorting the truth and scaring consumers with a 'study' that is based on 10 filets. Alpinfox, since you won't believe me when I say that salmon farmers aren't likely to have the resources to fund studies to defend PCB charges (and I don't think they were responsible for 'the Monsanto lady's quotes), please spend a couple of hours researching the financial resources of the EWG versus Chilean salmon farmers. Do it with an honest, open mind. Do you think that salmon farming companies that are operating below cost to begin with because of low prices can take the time and effort and $ to do that? Wouldn't they be breaking their fiduciary duty to shareholders by wasting money in that manner? Are you really so bamboozled by corporate stereotypes bandied about by the enviro-subculture that you think every industry is controlled by mega-corpations with vaults of money?

Dru, I think that the analogy would more accurately be: Hmmm, the farmed salmon industry is being attacked by a group using tobacco science with a sample size of ten and the New York Times as a loudspeaker. How should they respond? I'm not sure that the article that I pasted is one sponsored by the farmed salmon industry. It might have been the science group itself responding. All I know is that I clipped it from a general seafood industry zine.

Alpinfox, that ain't my quote...that's an article I pasted! You are missing the point that the EWG is the attacker here. The salmon farming industry would be expected to defend themselves, right?

O_W, what happened in the salmon industry over the past 6 year ought to be written up as a Harvard Bus School case. It is a great example of how attacking your competitor can sometimes backfire on you. When the salmon producers in the US filed suit on the Chilean salmon farming companies, the Chileans were forced to redirect their marketing money into legal defense in the antidumping suit. This couldn't have happened at a worse time...they had increased production and needed to be building consumption in the US, their number 1 market. The antidumping suit ended in the Chileans' favor. Meanwhile, additional production hit the marketplace without the benefit of that industry's marketbuilding ad program. Wham, salmon filet prices fell to $2.00 per lb wholesale, FOB US ports of entry. That's way below cost, and therefore, after a financial bloodbath, a greater share of that industry is now Euro-owned. Most of the salmon companies are fish-only companies, even the biggest international ones. The traditional mega-corporations that you might think of investing in this industry long ago got out, usually having lost money. In my experience, you gotta be nuts to be in any facet of the fish biz.

catfish are farmed in the US. Tilapia are farmed in Asia and Latin America primarily. Both are good, tasty, mainly-herbivorous fish. Together with carp, they probably score the best environmentally all-around. Luna may be a scientist, but he/she spouts the enviro party line on this issue.

You are entitled to your opinion. I will continue to buy all types of salmon.

I've got sat at home because I live inj the boonies. Browsing at lightning speed...uploads slower than dsl but faster than phone. I'd have a tech look at his setup.

you people are more foolish than I thought. clearly the wealthholders in this debate are the enviro groups...not the wild fishermen and not the salmon farmers. The Chilean salmon producers spent their wad defending themselves against the antidumping charges brought by the wild salmon suppliers (who lost). Consequently, they were forced to suspend the advertising budget they used to spend, and the Norwegians have bought up much more of the Chilean production. The wild salmon suppliers rely in large part on the money from enviro groups in this debate. They don't realize that all this talk about PCBs justs makes ALL salmon consumption drop. The enviro groups have the money, and used it to attack the fish famring industry with bad science (less than a dozen fish in this case!) Look, I don't think you folks have any idea how many REAL toxins you ingest in the form of fumigants used in grain processes, naturally-forming toxins, etc. Those of you on the "luna"tic fringe want to accept your own action-group's pr campaign as fact without putting it into perspective. I'm not involved in either side of this debate, but have done business with both sides. I'm also a consumer who tries to apply his knowledge of the food biz to his family's diet...in a common-sense way.

and Luna is looney. I'll bet I could get the point across to most of you free-thinkers, that there are two industries battling here, with enviromental pacs in on it also. A whole lot of the debate is bad science, I'll grant coming from both sides. It's not a reason to stop enjoying wild OR farmed salmon.

PCBs are out there in both wild and farmed salmon populations. There are differing results from studies about which has more. My point is that the uninformed reader is being hammered with words whose real origin is a political war rather than a science-driven one.

Aha, found it. Please read this: [NY Post] - August 29, 2003 -BY Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan- Chefs at some of New York's finest restaurants - including Blue Water Grill, Atlantic Grill and Blue Fin - are practicing the latest form of culinary political correctness: banning farmed salmons from their menus, to supposedly protect their patrons' health. The cause? A flurry of media reports that an environmental advocacy organization, the Environmental Working Group (EWG), found unusually high levels of PCBs the long-banned industrial chemicals that news reports claimed 'caused cancer' in farmed salmon. The Washington Post, for example, opined in a news piece that 'farmed salmon consumption may be posing a health threat to millions of Americans.' The New York Times informed readers that PCBs were 'probable human carcinogens.' No wonder the chefs got reeled into a state of farmed-salmon phobia. But they and millions of other Americans terrified by the alarming news reports were never given two critical facts that would have allowed them to digest the fish scare with a few grains of salt: * First, there is absolutely no credible evidence that environmental exposure to PCBs (including ingesting the trace levels in the fish) poses any risk of human cancer. Even workers exposed in occupational settings to high levels of PCBs for decades manifest no elevated rates of cancer that could be related to PCB exposure. The designation of PCBs as 'carcinogens' is based exclusively on observations of experiments wherein animals were given high doses of PCBs. And by now, everyone should know that natural foods contain a spectrum of chemicals that cause cancer in rodents (the hydrazines in mushrooms, for example) and no one is worrying about human cancer risk from trace levels of animal carcinogens in natural foods. * Second, the source of these 'data' on farmed salmon was no mainstream scientific group. Indeed, the EWG is something of a phantom organization. A visit to their Web page leaves one wondering, 'Just who are these masked men?' Two things we know for sure: There are no physicians or scientists associated with EWG yet they are advising us on how to avoid cancer. Furthermore, EWG is funded by agenda-driven entities, including private foundations committed to restoring the 'natural world' and eliminating the use of agricultural chemicals. EWG repeatedly urges consumers to 'buy organic.' Clearly, the technical sophistication of the farmed salmon industry is 'unnatural' and thus unacceptable in the eyes of EWG and their funders. These basic facts spawn, if you will, two questions: First, why were the media so gullible that they reported this story as if it had scientific legitimacy from a credible source? Why in this age of 'transparency' did the media not tell us that the 'data' were generated by a group that had no scientific or medical credentials or credibility and has an ideological commitment to only 'natural' food production? Second, why were scientists from universities across America academics who knew this report was bogus not outraged, issuing press releases to correct the record? Why did scientists and physicians (with the exception of the group I direct, the American Council on Science and Health) remain silent as critical facts on cancer risk were distorted in the press? Even more curious, why did the world's foremost experts on cancer causation the cancer epidemiologists at the National Cancer Institute not instantly respond to correct the record and declare that, contrary to media reports, there is no evidence at all that trace levels of chemicals that cause cancer in animals including the purported PCB traces in farmed salmon pose a human cancer risk? What's a chef to do? If the media headlines proclaim 'cancer' and the scientific community remains mute, the 'silence-is- assent' rule prevails. It's time not only to grill farmed salmon, but also to grill scientists and the media for spreading junk science. Instead, they should have called 'tripe' when tripe is served. Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan is president of the American Council on Science and Health.

Fairweather, while the Enviro Working Group did what it intended, to scare people, it used bad science. I'm not a salmon farmer, but I know a little about the politics of wild fishing and fish farming, which I did a thread on recently. It'll take me a few minutes, but I'll try to dig up a good piece I saw in a seafood zine a week or so ago, putting a better perspective on the piece you cited. Farmed Atlantics from Chile, troll-caught Kings, and everything in-between...they're all good!! Meanwhile, here's something interesting: September 3, 2003 – The Oregonian newspaper has been running a series on farmed salmon. The final segment was a report on blindfold taste tests conducted in Portland, Oregon and Chicago. The results were surprising. Troll caught wild Pacific king salmon won out by only a small margin over farmed Atlantic salmon from Chile and the tasters in Chicago seemed better able to identify which was which than the Portland panel. Only three of 11 tasters in Portland could tell which salmon was which. In Chicago, five people pegged the wild correctly. Of the 22 panelists, five were professional chefs. The fish was prepared the same way, baked at 400 degrees in a convection oven and lightly basted with unsalted butter. Salt and pepper were added. All the fish was cooked until just opaque at the center.

I guess you're for no fed employees, fire roads on public, etc. too.

Hell, I don't even pretend! And I kick cats, not dogs. Where is DFA, speaking of guzzlers? I don't buy trask's assertion that he's off already getting an annulment.

What the hell are you two talking about? BTW, trask, I went over and looked at the fun you had on nwhikers...and what do I see but our very own mtngoat, running cc.com down because of it's raw humor. And here I'd assumed he was really one of us!