Target to Sell Only Wild-Caught Alaskan Salmon- Is that Sustainable?

Is it Sustainable to sell only wild-caught fish?Target is going to stop selling farmed salmon in its stores. Not that they will stop selling salmon, but that they will now only sell wild-caught Alaskan salmon. They will even be changing over sushi that contains farm-raised salmon.

Why? Target says they are doing it "to ensure that its salmon offerings are sourced in a sustainable way that helps to preserve abundance, species health and doesn't harm local habitats."

Let’s think about that.

1. Ensuring that salmon offerings are sourced in a sustainable way.
2. Sourced in a sustainable way that helps to preserve abundance.
3. Preserve species health.
4. Doesn’t harm local habitats.

Overall, the statement strikes me as well-intentioned, green-washed and not really true.

1. Ensuring that salmon offerings are sourced in a sustainable way. Catching huge numbers of wild fish is not sustainable. I don’t know how much fish Target sells, but I do know that they are the #2 retailer in the U.S., so that’s probably a lot of fish. Switching from farm-raised to wild-caught is not a sustainable move by definition, as it will put more of a strain on the wild population. It would actually be more sustainable for them to develop Target-specific salmon farms. And if they want them to be Earth-friendly, then feed them organic food and get them swimming around or something.
2. Sourced in a sustainable way that helps to preserve abundance. I covered this a lot in the last one, but I think what they meant was sourced in a way that is healthier, or cleaner, or less likely to use a lot of chemicals. It just cries out overfishing issue to me. If everyone just ate wild-caught fish right now we’d be out of fish pretty soon. That’s not sustainable. And the only real solution is to eat less fish or grow more on a farm.
3. Preserve species health. Again, the health of the species overall will be damaged if Target starts catching what I can only expect to be millions more of those fish.
4. Doesn’t harm local habitats. Um… ditto.

I appreciate what Target is going for here and I’m not trying to demonize them. Maybe they have it all worked out- maybe they have done the math and have great relationships with wild fisherman and I will be eating my words next year when they present at the Slow Food conference in San Francisco about how they are more earth-friendly than Whole Foods now. But I doubt it. It’s well-intentioned. They want to sell healthy fish. I get it. They want to do something green. I get it. It just seems that such a massive store switching to wild-caught ALASKAN salmon is the kind of move that will stress the local habitat, cause problems for the species, and ensure that their fish is sourced in what will become a very unsustainable way.

Some quotes from Alaskan fish and wildlife people talking about how this will pan out and about how well this will work out for the salmon would convince me otherwise, but until then I have to raise the proverbial eyebrow and object.

Photo Credit: Alan Vernon (via Flickr under CCL)