At the fish counter, farm-raised salmon looks just like wild salmon. But as the COLOR ADDED labels cropping up in supermarkets suggest, the aquacultured fillet's pinkish hue is a testament to engineering, not nature. The labels refer to the food additives canthaxanthin and astaxanthin. Without them, the flesh of farmed salmon - which don't eat the krill that colors the wild ones - would be gray.
Complicating matters further, different retail buyers prefer different pinks. So clever fish farmers use the SalmoFan - a reference that, like paint chips, lets them pick a color. Add the right amount of chemical and get anything from bubble-gum bright to dusty rose. Hoffmann-LaRoche, which manufactured the supplements (now made by DSM Nutritionals), gave the fan away with 2003 shipments.
The absurdity of the SalmoFan bolstered pressure on supermarkets to disclose canthaxanthin content on consumer packaging; now the environmental lobby wants grocers to note potential health risks, too. Meanwhile, fish ranchers still have to overcome the fact that although 88 percent of the fresh salmon Americans eat is farmed, it doesn't taste as good as wild. But it looks so pretty on a bagel.
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