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Salmon Wars

The Dark Underbelly of Our Favorite Fish

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

"After listening to Amy McFadden's narration of this exposé, salmon croquettes may never taste the same. McFadden uses a podcaster- style of storytelling, friendly and righteous, to animate the history of farmed salmon's calculated rise to prominence."- AudioFile

A Pulitzer Prize-winning correspondent and a former private investigator dive deep into the murky waters of the international salmon farming industry, exposing the unappetizing truth about a fish that is not as good for you as you have been told.

A decade ago, farmed Atlantic salmon replaced tuna as the most popular fish on America's dinner tables. We are told salmon is healthy and environmentally friendly. The reality is disturbingly different.
In Salmon Wars, investigative journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins bring readers to massive ocean feedlots where millions of salmon are crammed into parasite-plagued cages and fed a chemical-laced diet. The authors reveal the conditions inside hatcheries, where young salmon are treated like garbage, and at the farms that threaten our fragile coasts. They draw colorful portraits of characters, such as the big salmon farmer who poisoned his own backyard, the fly-fishing activist who risked everything to ban salmon farms in Puget Sound, and the American researcher driven out of Norway for raising the alarm about dangerous contaminants in the fish. Frantz and Collins document how the industrialization of Atlantic salmon threatens this keystone species, endangers our health and environment, and lines the pockets of our generation's version of Big Tobacco. And they show how it doesn't need to be this way.
Just as Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation forced a reckoning with the Big Mac, the vivid stories, scientific research, and high-stakes finance at the heart of Salmon Wars will inspire readers to make choices that protect our health and our planet.
A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt and Company.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from April 11, 2022
      Erin Brockovich meets Wicked Tuna in this searing exposé from reporters Collins and Frantz (Fallout). Though eating salmon is widely believed to be a responsible and healthy choice, the authors argue that Big Salmon is a powerful industry that prioritizes profits over health—both of the fish and those who consume it. As the authors show, the majority of salmon that reach restaurant or dinner tables are raised in conditions that are harsh, unsanitary, and negatively impact the environment: millions of salmon are reared in cages on massive aquafarms, which pollute underlying seabeds with a layer of slime from “excess feed, chemical residue, and fecal matter” that can reach nearly three feet thick. Scientists, meanwhile, have been trying to sound the alarm about the health risks associated with eating farmed salmon, only to be thwarted by the industry’s “campaign to discredit the criticism.” The authors round things out with suggestions that the USDA, which lacks “standards for what constitutes ‘organic’ salmon,” ought to have some, and should “ramp up oversight.” This stellar investigation is the rare one that has the power to impact policymakers and consumers alike. Agent: David Halpern, Robbins Office.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      After listening to Amy McFadden's narration of this expos�, salmon croquettes may never taste the same. McFadden uses a podcaster- style of storytelling, friendly and righteous, to animate the history of farmed salmon's calculated rise to prominence. It now accounts for 90% of U.S. salmon. Though fish farming is touted as sustainable, these ocean feedlots have the highest mortality rate (1 in 5) of any farmed animal. Besides suffering from parasites and disease, some penned-in fish ingest chemicals, including red dye, to give them "the illusion of health." It's not all gloom and doom, as McFadden's upbeat delivery ends the audiobook with a positive report on efforts to save wild salmon from extinction. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

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