Callander McDowell

reLAKSation no 431

Consuming issues: In the last issue of reLAKSation we looked at a recent taste test of smoked salmon conducted by celebrity chef Mark Hix for the Times newspaper. This week, the Observer engaged another celebrity chef, Tom Aikens, to carry out a similar test.

Tom Aikens tasted some of the same smoked salmon as reviewed by Mark Hix and the results show how personal taste can influence the results. Mark Hix gave Orkney organic smoked salmon from Waitrose only two stars saying the salmon was insipid. Tom Aikens gave the same product four stars coming out joint top of the products tasted. Tom Aikens said that it looks organic with a good flavour. The Sunday Telegraph pronounced this product one of the top six smoked salmon products available (four came from independent smoke houses).

Joint top in the Observer taste test was Aldi smoked salmon (£12.95/kg). Tom Aikens said that the pale pink colour is a good indication of its provenance!

Four smoked salmon products all received three stars and were joint third in the test. None featured in the Times tastes test but were Asda’s smoked salmon (£19.68/kg although this product is on a multi-buy promotion at £16.00/kg), Co-op (price quoted as £13.75/kg but this is the price of a current ‘better then half price’ promotion. The normal price is £29.95/kg) and John Ross Jr (£29.95/kg). This product is reported as being available from Ocado but it is also available in Waitrose. The fourth product is the M&S smoked salmon with stout. This is a special product made just for the festive season and is made with Irish organic smoked salmon, although the test does not mention this. This product also featured in the Sunday Telegraph’s best six smoked salmon.

With two stars, Tom Aikens did not like Morrison’s the Best smoked salmon which he described as having the texture of pate and a revolting neon colour. Yet, this smoked salmon was judged to be joint top in the Times taste test. It simply shows how personal taste can vary. However, both chefs were in total agreement that Tesco’s Finest smoked salmon was their least liked with just one star. Tom Aikens said that it is weirdly acidic and incredibly greasy with too much salt and over-smoked. This is not a good advert for the Shetland Isles where this salmon is sourced but what it does show is the need for control over the use of regional names.

Currently, there is the usual Christmas price war on smoked salmon with the price of promotional packs falling dramatically in almost every retailer. Normally, the best deal can be found in the discount stores such as Aldi and Lidl with smoked salmon at £12.95/kg. Lidl have just cut the price of their smoked salmon as reviewed in the Times to £10/kg but not to be out-done, Asda who heavily advertise their low prices have large packs of the same smoked salmon as reviewed by the Observer for ‘better than half price’. A 407g pack can be bought for just £4.00 equating to £9.82/kg. Working backwards this gives a normal price of £8.01. By raising the price by 1p, Asda cannot get any closer to better than half price than this.

Interestingly, Asda were unsure what the best way to screw down the price was until very recently. This is because the latest issue of the Asda magazine states – ‘Why not serve strips of Asda Extra Special Scottish smoked salmon (as shown) £8 (400g)?’ The inclusion of a question mark shows that they were still undecided about the weight. Equally of interest is that the smoked salmon now on offer is not their premium Extra Special variant but a large pack of their standard product!

Asda’s pricing policy was also featured in the Daily Mail with the news that the store were offering a whole salmon for just £3. Yet, the paper says that this is the astonishing price of a whole frozen fish available at Asda. However, the implication was rather misleading for as Asda told the paper this was the price for a whole frozen Alaskan pink salmon, not a locally produced farmed Atlantic salmon. They are completely different fish.

The Daily Mail raises a number of interesting points about this £3 salmon which merit further discussion. We will address them point by point:

The company says that this is a record low price for the 2.6lb Alaskan pink salmon. Here in Europe we tend to use metric measurements that mean that this fish equates to 1.18kg however as our photo of the pack clearly shows the declared weight is only 840g. As these are wild fish, there is inevitably some variation between individual fish but 840g is well short of 1.18kg. Some of this difference will come from the fact that the salmon is declared as having a ‘protective ice glaze’ which means that after defrosting the fish will weigh much less.

Asda says that the fish would be enough to feed eight making the cost of a portion less than 39p. This may be true if the fish weighed 2.6lb but at 840g eight diners would get a very poor portion, especially as the total weight includes fins and tail and bones.

Asda say that they have managed to keep the cost low because the fish used to be shipped from Alaska via Seatlle and the Netherlands but this year they have managed to miss out Seattle which has cut costs a lot. We have a greater insight into this because the comment section of the online version of the newspaper includes the following comment. It is quite unusual for a supplier to publicly comment on a product so it is copied here:

I sold them them this fish last summer when the ASDA buyers travelled to Alaska. We flew them into one of our remote factories to watch the fish being processed. I was so pleased with the foresight of ASDA to purchase promote this WILD caught fish from one of the most sustainable fisheries in the world. The fish is caught by local fishermen and then flash frozen within hours of catch. It is a cheap price because it is a small size and the most plentiful salmon in Alaska. We ship it direct to the UK in volume on container ships to keep the cost down.

It is great to see the UK recognizing this wild salmon as a lean inexpensive alternative to the farmed salmon. As long as you don't over cook it, it tastes great!

Thank you England!

Michael McGinley
Ocean Beauty Seafoods
+1-206-285-6800

Asda says that the salmon is the best value it can offer and points to the cost of whole fresh salmon on sale at other retailers. The comparative data they supplied to the Daily Mail is as follows:

Selfridges, Harrods and Fortnum & Mason are not exactly the average high street retailer and such comparison is total nonsense. M&S currently have just two fish counters which they are trialling so these whole salmon (actually £9.99/kg) are not widely available.

The main high street retailers told the Daily Mail that they do not sell a equivalent product so cannot provide a comparative price. 

Mr McGinley from Ocean Beauty Seafoods said that pink salmon is an inexpensive alternative to farmed salmon whilst Asda say it is the lowest priced salmon on the market. Based on the declared weight of 840g the price of this fish is £3.57/kg and this is the price that is declared on the shelf label in store. However, consumers can currently buy whole fresh farmed salmon in Tesco for just £3.49/kg which by our maths is cheaper than Asda’s lowest priced salmon. We know which we would buy.

PS. We have a whole Alaskan pink salmon in our freezer. Any reasonable offer accepted!

Sustainable issues: According to IntraFish, sustainable seafood has been one of the top trends highlighted by the US National Restaurant Association. By comparison, they say, it is not a new trend for the top Quick Service Restaurant brands such as McDonalds who already have well established sustainable seafood sourcing policies. QSR Web says that the bad news is that few consumers know anything about these policies. They are usually only mentioned as part of the annual corporate responsibility report. IntraFish therefore poses the question as to why McDonalds isn’t more open about its sustainable fish policies.

The answer is that most McDonald’s customers simply don’t care and why should they. The majority of those who eat in McDonalds don’t buy fish. They buy burgers and chicken.

Equally, many commentators equate fast food consumption with the growing levels of obesity in developed countries. If such consumers are not interested in looking after their own health, then they are certainly not interested in looking after the health of the world’s oceans.

As we have repeated a number of times previously, it is our belief that the majority of consumers are not interested in sustainability, at least when they are actually buying fish and seafood. They trust their retailer to stock fish and seafood that is sustainable and they buy whatever is available. It is therefore up to the seafood industry to ensure that the fish and seafood they supply are sustainable not for consumers to police whether they are or not.

The seafood industry has not made it easy for the consumer to understand the issue of sustainability. There are an ever increasing amount of different labels beginning to appear in stores, all meaning different things but with the same common theme. Eric Roderick of FishGen said that this plethora of labels is highly confusing to the public and it’s not just the public who appear to be confused.

Discussing the availability of sustainably produced salmon, Karen Galloway, Marketing Manager with SeaFish told Fish Farming Xpert that such fish will continue to be sought after in the future. She said that people still want a good quality accreditation such as ‘Freedom Food’. However, Freedom Food accreditation has little to do with sustainability but is actually the only UK farm assurance scheme to focus solely on improving the welfare of farmed animals reared for food.

If industry personnel don’t understand the difference between the various labels, then what hope is there for consumers?

Of course, the most often quoted sustainability mark is the Marine Stewardship Council and the most established of all their certified fisheries is Alaska salmon. According to the MSC, this fishery, first certified in September 2000 covers five species of salmon, Chinook, Coho, Sockeye, Pink and Chum, all caught within US territorial waters adjacent to the coast of the State of Alaska. As this fishery has been certified for nine years, the fish should be by now clearly identifiable to, and understood by consumers.

Since we already discussed the appearance of whole frozen pink salmon onto the UK market, we think that it is worth exploring how the sustainability of this fish is promoted to UK consumers. After all Michael McGinley of Ocean Beauty Seafoods has made a point of writing to say that the fish supplied has come from one of the most sustainable fisheries in the world. An Asda spokesman confirmed to the Daily Mail that the fish is sustainably sourced from Alaska.

The fish is supplied in a pre-printed sealed plastic bag, the front of which simply states Asda Wild Alaskan whole salmon as well as ‘Merry Christmas’. The back label states Wild Alaskan whole Pink salmon with a protective ice glaze and provides information on cooking, storing nutrition, allergy advice (the product contains fish), disposal instructions for the plastic bag, a warning that the product contains bones and details of Asda’s consumer policy. What is not listed are details of the sustainability of the fish and an even greater omission, there is no MSC logo present. This may be a sustainably sourced fish, but Asda customers don’t have any way of knowing this. Yet surely as salmon described as caught in Alaska, this fish should be labelled as MSC certified?

One possible reason why this is not the case is that the supplier may not have a MSC chain of custody certificate. The MSC web page that identifies suppliers that can MSC certified seafood implies that such chain of custody certification is required to supply MSC certified seafood. We can identify the company that has packed this fish for Asda and it does appear that they are certified, so why no MSC logo on this fish.

The mystery deepens if the use of the MSC logo on other Asda products is explored. Asda sells packs of frozen Alaskan salmon as both fillet and steaks. The bags are identically designed and are similar other than the contents. They are both supplied by the same company that has packed the whole fish. The bag of fillets doesn’t carry the MSC logo even though the fillets, like the whole fish product, are Alaskan Pink salmon. By comparison, the MSC logo does appear on the bags of salmon steaks. However, unlike the fillets and the whole salmon, the steaks are from Chum salmon.

What are Asda’s customers to make of this labelling? Those wanting to buy the sustainable option should buy the salmon steaks and ignore the fillets and the whole fish. After all, they are not labelled as sustainable so why should anyone believe that they are?

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