12.16.04 - Jamie Oliver in hot water over farmed salmon commercials

Jamie Oliver, one of America's favorite celebrity chefs, has got himself into hot water by filming commercials for supermarket giant Sainsbury promoting farmed Scottish salmon. In the commercial, he visits a Highland salmon farm and smokehouse whose proprietors claim its salmon are "healthy because the loch is so cold."

(Click here to see the ad.)

According to a January 2004 article in the Guardian Unlimited, "Scientists looked at 700 salmon from eight regions of the world and found Scottish farmed salmon the most polluted. The contamination by carcinogenic chemicals was so concentrated that they recommended Scottish farmed salmon should only be eaten once every two months."

"Clarissa Dickson Wright has branded Jamie Oliver a "whore" (ouch) over his latest advert for Sainsburys, which has led to an investigation by the Advertising Standards Authority over whether claims about the healthiness of farmed salmon can be justified."

"A spokesman for Oliver said: “Clarissa Dickson Wright tends to say such things any time she is wheeled out. If it was the sort of thing that he shouldn’t have put his name to then he would not have done so. All of the produce we use is stuff we can find fresh in markets and we use wild salmon when it is in season."

More coverage in the Scotsman and Sunday Times.

Farmed Scottish salmon does have it's artisans, Fergus Granville is one of them.

Everybody loves Atlantic salmon - here's the catch. "Atlantic salmon fish meal is made from wild pelagic fish including herring, anchovies and other species...the number that astounds me is that according to research groups, it takes 2 to 4 pounds of wild fish to make 1 pound of farmed Atlantic salmon. So if you have 274 million farmed Atlantic salmon around the world right now, it's not going to take very long to clean out our oceans..." From National Geographic.

UPDATE:
Jamie Oliver's statement on his website:
"Whenever I'm asked to do food ads for Sainsburys, I get my food team to do research into it first before I commit to doing anything, but even though they gave me the green light I arrived at the fish farm to do the ad with a load of questions to ask, as in the past I've been appalled by irresponsible fish farming and the poor hygene, low quality produst and lack of environmental common sense associated with it..." Continue reading his response on jamieoliver.com.