British Birds Eye switches to wild salmon after reports of contaminants in farmed.

Birds Eye, the biggest brand name in frozen food in the United Kingdom, has switched from farmed to wild salmon for its fish cakes, following a wave of bad publicity about alleged pollutants like PCBs in British farmed fish.

The company had been using farmed salmon from different sources, mainly Scotland, in a salmon fish cakes product, but announced it was changing to Pacific wild salmon instead because it fits in with "consumer tastes and sustainability" of fish stocks: "Birds Eye is all about providing natural food in a pioneering way, and wild salmon fits into this policy," said a spokesman.

Callander McDowell, a strategic planning consultancy for the aquaculture industry, quickly dismissed Birds Eye's move as little more than a publicity stunt, pointing out that parent company Unilever--as a founding member of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)--had no choice in the matter, and is a bit player in any case.

"Unilever and its subsidiary companies have always been committed to using MSC approved fish in its products and in the case of salmon, this means wild Pacific salmon," McDowell said. "Birds Eye are not a great user of salmon as they currently only produce two salmon products in the UK, although they are extending the range."

A report issued in January claimed British farmed salmon was so full of pollutant chemicals it should only be eaten sparingly. It was based on a study by US and Canadian scientists, coordinated by the universities of Indiana and New York and published in Science magazine, which found high levels of toxins in farm-raised salmon--not just in the UK, but in other countries including Chile--compared to levels in wild fish.

Chilean salmon farmers quickly went on the offensive. The study is "dangerous, alarmist and a shot in the dark," said Leonel Sierralta, environmental advisor to SalmonChile, the name used by the Association of Salmon and Trout Producers in the South American country. "One cannot say that eating 200 grams of salmon is going to cause cancer, because it is a disease that is produced by recurring exposure to a carcinogenic substance."

But environmentalist and consumer lobbyists have issued a call for more rigorous standards in certifying salmon, and have demanded that the companies involved comply with their social responsibilities.

"We are demanding the adoption of rigorous standards for certification (health and environmental) of salmon. That is what needs to be done, instead of trying to invalidate a serious report," commented environmental economist Cristian Gutierrez, of the international watchdog group Oceana.

The study published in Science compared more than two metric tons of cuts of salmon that had been raised on farms and that which had been caught in the wild. More than 700 fillets tested by experts in toxicology, biology and statistics came from eight of the world's major producers, whether of Atlantic salmon (Scotland, Britain, and the east coast of the United States and Canada) or Pacific salmon (North America and Chile).

The study analyzed the presence of 14 toxins considered carcinogenic by the US health authorities, and concluded that farm-raised Atlantic salmon, particularly from Scotland, contain high levels of 13 toxins, much higher than the levels of Pacific salmon. But even the farm-raised salmon from Chile or the northwestern US state of Washington, which are among the least contaminated, contain more PCBs, dioxins and dieldrin than wild salmon, the scientists said.