Mr.Antiwoke retweetledi
In the 1980s, the Norwegian salmon farming industry ran into a colour problem.
Wild salmon are pink because they eat krill and small crustaceans containing a pigment called astaxanthin. The pigment accumulates in the muscle tissue and gives the flesh its colour. That colour is one of the cues a diner uses, consciously or otherwise, to decide whether the fish on the plate is appetising.
Farmed salmon, raised on soy protein, corn meal, fish meal from wild-caught smaller fish, and stabilisers, do not eat krill. They do not accumulate astaxanthin. Without intervention, their flesh is grey. Washed-out, unappealing grey.
Nobody buys a grey salmon.
So the industry adopted synthetic astaxanthin, manufactured by Hoffmann-La Roche, originally developed as a feed additive to brighten poultry yolks. It is added to salmon feed in measured doses.
The doses are calibrated against a colour chart called the SalmoFan, produced by the same company, which the farmer holds against a slice of flesh from a slaughtered fish to confirm the pigmentation has reached the commercially desirable shade.
The SalmoFan has fifteen shades.
The farmer picks the target shade based on what the supermarket buyer in the destination country considers appealing.
Norwegian salmon, sitting on the ice in a British supermarket, has been colour-graded to match the expectations of a marketing department in Hoddesdon.
The fish you're looking at is the colour the company chose.
The fish didn't pick it. The krill didn't provide it. The pigment came from a Swiss laboratory.
You're eating a paint sample.
The paint is fish-flavoured.
The fish remembers krill. It has never tasted krill. The krill is in a different part of the supply chain.
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