Taboo Broken for Profit: Your Farmed Salmon Is Now Being Fed Chicken

Salmon is the poster child of healthy eating: rich in omega-3 fatty acids, packed with protein, good for heart and brain. But the salmon on supermarket shelves usually has little in common with the wild fish leaping up a river. More than 70% of the salmon eaten worldwide today comes from fish farms – and what those fish are fed is changing fast.

Chicken in salmon feed: a taboo falls

According to a recent report in the Financial Times, Europe's biggest salmon producers have started feeding their fish poultry by-products – the parts of the chicken not fit for human consumption, such as bone, liver and brain. Lerøy, one of Norway's largest salmon farmers, now uses them at all of its offshore farms. Grieg Seafood has introduced chicken meal and oil, SalMar is testing it, and Mowi – the world's biggest producer – is reportedly planning to follow in Norway and Scotland.

The reason is simple: cost. The price of fishmeal made from wild fish has almost doubled in two years, while poultry meal costs less than half as much. And nobody has to tell you: retailers are not required to list feed ingredients on the pack. You have no way of knowing whether your salmon was raised on chicken.

The bigger issue: soy, vegetable oils and pesticides

Chicken is only the latest chapter. For years, a large share of salmon feed has not been fish at all, but plants: soy, rapeseed, maize and wheat. Much of it comes from South America, where soy is grown in vast monocultures with heavy pesticide use.

Residues travel from the feed into the fish. To keep farmed salmon on the market, limits have been adjusted: the EU raised the permitted level of certain pesticides in fish feed, such as endosulfan. For some pesticide residues, the tolerance limits for salmon are higher than for poultry, beef or pork. For a food we eat precisely because it is supposed to be good for us, that is a remarkable contradiction.

On top of that come the well-known environmental problems of salmon farming:

Waste and uneaten feed polluting the fjords
Sea lice spreading to wild populations
Escaped farmed fish interbreeding with wild salmon
Pollutants such as PCBs and dioxins from feed accumulating in the fat

So what does that mean for your omega-3?

Here's the key point: salmon don't produce large amounts of EPA and DHA themselves. In nature they get them through their diet – algae and small fish. When a farmed salmon is fed soy, rapeseed oil and chicken fat instead, its EPA and DHA content drops, while its omega-6 share rises.

That makes fish oil from farmed salmon questionable on two counts:

Less of what you actually take it for – EPA and DHA.
More of what you don't want – residues from feed and farming.

Why sustainably caught wild fish makes the difference

Wild fish eat what nature intended. Their omega-3 profile comes from the natural food chain, not from a feed bag. But how they are caught matters just as much. Overfishing is one of the biggest threats to our oceans – wild-caught is only a good choice if stocks are strictly controlled and managed sustainably.

That is exactly what the MSC label (Marine Stewardship Council) stands for. It is only awarded to fisheries that have been assessed by independent experts against three principles:

Sustainable fish stocks – only as much is caught as the population can replace.
Minimal environmental impact – low bycatch, protected habitats.
Effective management – clear rules, enforcement and adaptation to new science.

On top of that, the supply chain is traced all the way from the boat to the capsule.

That's why Superior Omega 3 is made from MSC-certified wild Alaskan pollock – not from salmon, and not from farms:

Wild-caught, not farmed – no soy feed, no chicken by-products, no antibiotics from aquaculture.
MSC-certified – independently verified, sustainable fishery with a traceable supply chain.
Alaska – one of the most tightly regulated fisheries in the world; sustainable management is even written into the state constitution.
Highly concentrated – 2000 mg fish oil per serving with 800 mg EPA and 400 mg DHA, in natural triglyceride form. Those are the numbers that matter – not just the amount of "fish oil".

EPA and DHA contribute to the normal function of the heart. The beneficial effect is obtained with a daily intake of 250 mg of EPA and DHA.

Bottom line: turn the bottle around

Not all salmon is equal – and not all fish oil is either. Before you buy your next omega-3 supplement, ask three questions:

Where does the fish come from? Wild or farmed?
Is the fishery independently certified? Look for the blue MSC label.
How much EPA and DHA is really inside – not just "fish oil"?

Your body deserves omega-3 from the ocean, not from a feed bag – and the ocean deserves a fishery that still leaves fish for tomorrow.

👉 Discover Superior Omega 3

Source on salmon feed: Financial Times, "Farmed salmon now being raised on chicken".