>And secondly for farmed Atlantic Salmon.
>Personally, I'm mostly interested in the Tasmanian ones, >because that's
what I buy when I shop for salmon.

ok..the problem we have now is to know what kind of feed the salmon inside
any given can is getting..presumably a big manufacturer would get supplies
from a wide variety of farms and likely from different areas to cover
geographically-related problems in supply.  would be a lottery.

OTOH, one can hope that market pressures will eventually stimulate producers
to market salmon which is grain-free just as there is organic beef.

meanwhile maybe mullet is a better option healthwise though it tastes like
crap.


andrew


 This document dates from
Oct 2000, and is from an educational institution rather than an
industry source, but nevertheless:
http://www.utas.edu.au/docs/aquaculture/salmon/feeds.html

It says Tasmanian salmon get fed:

"fish meal, fish oil, grain products, milk products, binders and
vitamin/mineral premixes. Pigments such astaxanthin are incorporated
into the feeds to colour the flesh ... Attractants and feeding
stimulants, which are based on compounds such as amino acids,
also may be used to improve feed consumption and growth, and
to reduce waste"


Here's page with better data, but hard to read. Also probably more
relevant to Northern Hemisphere farming.
http://zoom.nap.edu/nap-cgi/rezoom.cgi?isbn=0309048915&page=53

It says "this diet has been used successfully on Atlantic Salmon...".
The diet consists of:
30% Herring
13% Soybean meal
17% Corn Gluten meal
16.5% Wheat middlings
10% Dried whey
11.5% Marine fish oil
1% Vitamins
1% minerals.

By my reckoning that's 58.5% of the diet from non-marine sources.
And 46.5% definitely from grains. I wonder how a paleo salmon
would gain access to grains and whey?

I would also expect the pellet manufacturers to be trying to
improve (i.e. reduce cost) on that recipe by replacing the expensive
Herring and Marine Fish Oil with cheaper alternatives. Perhaps beef
and poultry by-products would be included and make up perhaps 10% of
the overall mix. But apparently salmon are finicky eaters, so perhaps
they simply refuse to eat anything *too* inappropriate.

The USDA database (version SR12) shows wild salmon with n-6:n-3
of 1:4. Better source of n-3 fats than catfish, as expected. Farmed
salmon shows a ratio of 3:4. That's still an excellent source of n-3
fats, but only a third as good as wild salmon.


Some other interesting snippets I picked up along the way:

Farmed salmon in the Northern Hemisphere are routinely exposed
to a variety of insecticides to treat sea lice - including a couple
of organophosphates. http://logos.uba.uva.nl/ctz/vol69/nr01/a12

Heh, the "buyer's guide" at Aquafeed makes interesting reading:
http://www.aquafeed.com/search.php?site=bg&catid=1&posting=yes
This is the nasty stuff vendors are selling to fish pellet
manufacturers (and I wonder how much of the soy is GM?):
Soy lecithin, soy oil, soy protein concentrates and soybean meal.
Feather Meal, Poultry Meal, Poultry Fat, Poultry Blood Meal
wheat germ meal, wheat germ oil, scallop liver meal,
squid liver meal, wheat gluten, Oils, soya products,
peas, Soy protein concentrate, soybean meal, soy oil
oils, molasses, proteins, soybeanmeal, yellowcorn, feedwheat
Pellet binders, antioxidants, forage products and mold inhibitors.
Pellet binders, lubricants and water repellent binders.
Yucca schidigera feed additive, Herbal Feed Supplements
Pellet binder, Vitamins, Medicines, Probiotics

To be fair, the "good" stuff which probably makes up between 10 and
50% of the fish pellet is:
All types of krill, dried, frozen, liquid, meal and flaked
spirulina and chlorella algae powder shrimp, fish,
frozen artemia biomass, rotifers. Menhaden fish meal, oil
Penaeus monodon, Macrobrachium rosenbergii and fin fishes.
Fishmeal and fish oil from Peru.

 ...R.