Restaurants challenged on origins of salmon

Published on Sunday 15 August 2004 01:37

SOME of Scotland’s top restaurants are being challenged to reveal whether the salmon they are serving is farmed or wild.

The Salmon Farm Protest Group (SFPG) says diners should demand to know where the food on their plate has come from. It has begun to name and shame a string of top restaurants which it claims are keeping customers in the dark.

The group carried out a search of 50 Scots hotel and restaurant websites. It found no mention of the provenance of their fish - other than it was from Scotland.

The group’s chairman, Bruce Sandison, said customers should be told exactly what they were eating.

He said: "They have a right to know what they are being served. At present some diners are being deceived. When you go into an expensive restaurant you expect to be served fish which is safe.

"Current evidence seems to suggest that farmed salmon may not be safe. If you’re paying for an expensive dish you should be told where it is from.

"The bottom line is that it is about five times more expensive for restaurants to sell wild salmon than farmed salmon, which is why they don’t specify on their menus which it is."

He added: "If people vote with their mouths then we can make a difference."

The SFPG says it is likely that the fish some diners assume is wild is from west coast factory fish farms.

Some experts fear farmed salmon contains cancer-causing toxins, while others say it is perfectly safe. But fish producers and Britain’s Food Standards Agency hit back at the health warning, insisting that all salmon was still safe to eat.

Julie Edgar, spokeswoman for Scottish Quality Salmon, said it would welcome restaurants telling customers they were eating farmed salmon.

She said: "Any suggestion that farmed salmon is not safe is just scaremongering."

Bruce said that Glasgow’s famous Rogano restaurant, Edinburgh’s five-star Balmoral and the Champany Inn in Linlithgow, West Lothian, were among the worst offenders.

"None of the eateries say on their menus whether the salmon they dish up is farmed or wild."

But a spokeswoman for Rogano said: "If we printed the provenance of our salmon on the menu, we would have to do the same for all the food we serve. The menu would end up being several pages long."

Jeff Bland, executive chef at The Balmoral in Edinburgh, said: "We don’t have salmon on the menu that often at our Number One restaurant. But when we do offer it, it is wild salmon rather than farmed."

No one was available for comment at the Champany Inn.