Louisiana Foods Fish Fact for:
SALMON

The big news in the salmon business is how cheap this once pricey fish has become. This summer, the Tokyo wholesale price for Bristol Bay sockeyes slid below 500 yen/kilo ($2.65/lb.) just half what it was five years ago. And this in spite of the fact that the yen has almost doubled in value against the dollar over the same period!

Farmed salmon keeps getting cheaper, too, as farmers reduce their production costs. Five years ago, it cost most farmers about $2.50/lb. to grow fish. But the development of new vaccines and more efficient feeds have brought the cost down to about $1.50/lb. How low can they go? By the turn of the century, farmed salmon producers predict they will be able to grow fish for less than $1/lb. If that's the case, boneless salmon fillets will be just as cheap as boneless chicken breasts. And when that happens it may be a salmon, not a chicken, that's in every pot.

Species Specifics
  • World salmon harvests smashed yet another record in 1994 when total production reached 1.3 million tons - more than a third of it farmed.
  • Seven species of Pacific salmon are fished; three species chum, pink and sockeye account for about 90% of the catch.
  • The use of new vaccines has reduced the amount of antibiotics used by Norwegian salmon farmers by more than 70% since 1990.
  • Chums have the widest distribution of the Pacific salmon species, ranging from California north to the Arctic Coast and down to Korea.
  • Although catches of most West Coast salmon runs have plummeted lately, this summer California salmon trollers caught more than 500,000 kings - their best season in almost 10 years.

The above information is from the Seafood Leader Vol. 15, No. 5.
  next FAQ ... scallops

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