Buying a pork chop labeled "organic" is relatively straightforward: you can assume that the pig that produced it ate only organic food, roamed outdoors from time to time, and was left free of antibiotics.
But what makes a fish organic?
That is the question vexing the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which decides such things. The answer could determine whether US citizens will be able to add fish to the growing list of organic foods they are buying, and whether fish farmers will be able to tap into that trend and the profits that go with it.
Organic foods, which many people believe to be more healthful -- while others scoff -- are grown on farms that shun chemicals and synthetic fertilizers and that meet certain government standards for safeguarding the environment and animals.
An organic tomato must flourish without conventional pesticides. An organic chicken cannot be fed antibiotics. Food marketers can use terms like "natural" and "free range" with some wiggle room, but only the USDA can sanction the "organic" label.
To the dismay of some fishermen -- including many in the Alaskan salmon industry -- this means that wild fish, whose living conditions are not controlled, are not likely to make the grade. And that has led to a lot of bafflement, since wild fish tend to swim in pristine waters, show lower levels of contaminants, and be favored by fish lovers.
"If you can't call a wild Alaska salmon true and organic," Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski asked, "what can you call organic?"
Instead, it appears that only farm-raised salmon may pass muster, as may a good number of other farm-raised fish -- much to the delight of fish farmers.
"With our control from hatch to harvest, that's going to be what people are looking for," said Neil Anthony Sims, president and co-founder of Kona Blue Water Farms in Hawaii, which sells a species of yellowtail that is sometimes used for sushi.
Controversy
But a proposed guideline at the USDA for calling certain farmed fish "organic" is controversial on all sides.
Environmentalists argue that many farm-raised fish live in cramped nets in conditions that can pollute the water, and that calling them organic is a perversion of the label. Those who catch and sell wild fish say that their products should be called organic and worry that if they aren't, fish farmers will gain a huge leg up.
Even among people who favor the designation of farmed fish as organic, there are huge disputes over which types of fish should be included.
Trying to define what makes a fish organic "is a strange concept," said George H. Leonard, science manager for the Seafood Watch Program at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which offers a consumer guide to picking seafood.
"I think the more you look at it, particularly for particular kinds of fish, it gets even stranger," he said.
The issue comes down largely to what a fish eats, and whether the fish can be fed an organic diet. There is broad agreement that the organic label is no problem for fish that are primarily vegetarians, like catfish and tilapia, because organic feed is available to farms -- though expensive.
Fish that are carnivores -- salmon, for instance -- are a different matter because they eat other fish, which cannot now be labeled organic. That creates a chicken-and-egg problem, so to speak. Wild tuna, swordfish, and halibut are probably not going to qualify because they are rarely, if ever, farm raised.
The USDA panel that recommended adding farmed fish to the organic roster was willing to work around the issue, and offered various ways that fish-eating fish could qualify.
But those work-arounds have infuriated some environmentalists, who take issue with the idea that a fish could be called organic if it ate meal made from wild, nonorganic fish. This constituency complains, among other things, that demand for fish meal is depleting wild fisheries.
"When it comes to carnivorous fish, it seems to be a complete deception of what organic means," said Andrea Kavanagh, director of the Pure Salmon Campaign, an advocacy group working to improve conditions for farm-raised fish. "Organic is supposed to be on 100 percent organic feed."
Growth
As the purists balk, the market for organic foods grows. Consumer sales reached US$13.8 billion last year compared with US$3.6 billion in 1997, according to the Organic Trade Association. What started as a farming technique for crops has expanded into everything from processed foods to flowers and cosmetics. There was even a federal task force to evaluate organic pet food.
Fish farmers and retailers are painfully aware of what they are missing, and some of them are taking matters into their own hands. As things stand, a limited amount of seafood is being sold as organic at stores in the US, usually because it has been certified by other countries or by third-party accreditation agencies.
Taste
A hatchery in Florida called OceanBoy Farms is selling what it says are organic shrimp to Wal-Mart, Costco, and some other retailers. And at the Lobster Place, a seafood store in New York City, "organic" king salmon from New Zealand is offered for US$13.50 a pound, compared with US$19.95 for wild king salmon and US$9.95 for farm-raised salmon.
"People will go for organic salmon when wild king salmon isn't available," said Todd Harding, director of wholesale operations for the Lobster Place.
He said that the taste of organic salmon was more consistent, but that he generally preferred wild salmon.
While most consumers say they prefer wild-caught fish, 72 percent would buy organic fish at least some of the time, according to a recent survey by the New Jersey Department of Agriculture and Rutgers University.
If the USDA ultimately approves organic fish, it would certainly complicate the debate about what types of seafood are best in terms of taste, nutrition, price, and environmental impact. Farm-raised? Wild-caught? Or farm-raised organic?
There is plenty of history to the debate. In 2000, when the USDA sought to weed out some of the food industry's murkier organic claims, it named a task force to evaluate requests from fish farmers for organic eligibility.
The farmers argued, then as now, that with demand for seafood growing and many wild fisheries being depleted, farm-raised seafood should have a competitive edge. On farms, they said, the number of fish remains stable, and the quality of water and feed are controlled.
One thing the task force did was to rule out the possibility that wild fish could be labeled organic.
"It takes some thinking about," said Rebecca Goldburg, a senior scientist at the advocacy group Environmental Defense, who was on the advisory panel. "What it comes down to is organic is about agriculture, and catching wild animals isn't agriculture."
The task force recommended that farm-raised fish could be labeled organic as long as their diets were almost entirely organic plant feed.
The USDA shelved those recommendations and let the issue lie fallow. Last year a second task force was convened -- this time, with most of the members affiliated with the aquaculture industry.
Earlier this year, the group recommended far less stringent rules, including three options for what organic fish could eat: an entirely organic diet; nonorganic fish for seven years while fish farms make the transition to organic fish meal; or nonorganic fish meal from "sustainable" fisheries.
Depleted
Sustainable fisheries are those that ensure that their fish stocks do not become depleted.
Even if the recommendations are adopted, it will still take several years before USDA-certified organic fish appear in stores or restaurants. But domestic fish farmers say that new rules cannot come soon enough. While the aquaculture industry has experienced rapid growth, the vast majority of it has been overseas -- mainly in China -- and much of the growth in seafood sales in the US, which had a wholesale value of US$29.2 billion in 2004, has come from imports.
Rodger May, a Seattle businessman who sells wild and farm-raised salmon, is preparing for the day when he can sell his fish as organic. For now, he refers to some of his farm-raised salmon, which live in ocean pens, as "natural."
May says he believes that he has created the perfect environment for organic fish. His "natural" fish are raised in pens that contain fewer fish than with his regular farm-raised salmon, and live in a body of water where fast-moving currents constantly provide fresh water and flush away waste.
His fish eat a mixture of oily brown pellets that resemble dog food and contain protein in the form of ground-up fish; other farm-raised salmon are fed protein from chicken and other land animals, he said.
"How can a wild fish be cleaner than one of these?" he asked. "What can be more organic than something that comes out of the sea, that has no chemicals near it, no antibiotics and is fed fish?"
The USDA may ultimately agree with May. But even if it does, it could then face another round of difficult questions. For instance, what is an organic clam? An oyster? A scallop?
"How do you make conventional mollusk production different from organic mollusk production?" asked Goldburg, the USDA panelist, who noted that mollusks filter water for food.
"They are all just sucking up water. Is it cleaner water?" he said.
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