There’s nothing more iconic of the Northwest than salmon. Every spring salmon race upstream to their traditional spawning grounds along the Pacific from California to Alaska.

At New Seasons Market, we want to see this annual salmon migration continue. We’re committed to selling only wild-caught Pacific salmon and keeping farmed salmon out of our seafood cases. We believe that wild fish tastes better, is healthier for us, and is healthier for our local ecosystems.

We are proud to be able to help support our local food economy, rather than buying salmon that has been farmed off the coast of Chile or Canada at great cost to the environment. Before we opened our doors we knew that we wanted to do our part to support the region's fish and the men and women who make a living harvesting them. “We decided buying salmon that was locally caught made sense to support our local fishers,” our Meat and Seafood Buyer Alan Hummel says.

Wild fish are more delicious, and there are enough of these natural beauties for everyone to enjoy if we harvest them wisely. Salmon farming, however, which was once seen as a way to spare wild fish, has today grown into a billion industry that threatens native stocks.

Salmon farming is plagued with many of the same problems plaguing large-scale cattle, hog and poultry farms, as well as some problems that pose a unique threat. 

Salmon are kept in open net cages in estuaries that were once home to wild salmon, releasing tons of feces and parasites into the waters that threaten local ecosystems. Parasites, especially sea lice, can spread quickly from the net pens and spark epidemics among wild fish. 

Farmed salmon aren’t even naturally pink—they’re dyed with additives to their feed. The feed is laced with added dioxins, an additive to dye the otherwise dull grey flesh a more “natural” pink. 

And if farm fish escape, they compete with wild salmon for scarce habitat, taking over wild salmons’ traditional spawning grounds. Farmed salmon now outnumber wild salmon 85 to 1, and escaped farm salmon can push wild salmon out of already scarce habitat, further depleting wild stocks.

Salmon farming corporations similarly control the global market, squeezing small-scale fishermen up and down the Pacific Coast out of business by contributing to the depletion of wild stocks and flooding the market with lower priced farmed salmon.