The research paper seeks to focus on Northwest wild salmon and discuss how the current industrial agriculture of Northwest wild salmon food products affects the environment. The paper will also point out how Northwest wild salmon choice affect health individually, regionally, or globally. Additionally, there will be a discussion on how the food economics affects people who produce Northwest wild salmon, and their implications for the environment. Finally, there will be an analysis on the ethics of eating Northwest wild salmon. The presence of Northwest wild salmon is a positive indicator of the region’s estuaries as it plays a crucial role in the ecosystem chain because it forms part of the economic, environmental, ecological, and cultural heritage.
The current industrial agriculture of Northwest wild salmon has a positive impact on the environment because, over the years, Northwest wild salmon has always been considered as the sacred salmon, the soul, and the lifeblood of Pacific Northwest (Improving Habitat for Salmon and Steelhead 2). For this reason, the Wild Salmon is perceived to be environmentally friendly compared to the farmed salmon. Compared to the Wild Salmon, the farmed salmon tends to pollute (Antieau 91). The farmed salmon are normally raised in pens and are known to produce a lot of waste which ruin the domestic marine environments. As a result, the waste spreads diseases to other aquatic life. The farmed salmon is full of antibiotics which are harmful to people and cause health problems along the shorelines (National Research Council Staff 120). The farmed salmon can easily escape as a result it becomes an exotic species and is more likely to contaminate the precarious native wild stock. Therefore, Northwest wild salmon will still remain better for people and their environment.
Northwest wild salmon has an effect on the health of people either as individually, regionally or even worldwide; it is considered better for people in terms of health because the Northwest wild salmon tends to have a higher level of Omega 3 fatty acid. Omega 3 fatty acid has a positive effect on the health of people (Antieau 91). The Northwest Wild Salmon are not injected with any form of dye to give it a pink color. Instead, the wild salmon derives their pink color from the food they eat. For example, if an individual buys Salmon from the Columbia River he should know understand that the river has higher dioxin level together with the radioactive waste coming from Hanford (National Research Council Staff 120). However, one should highly consider the time taken the salmon spends in the river compared to the one that stays in the ocean. This depends on whether the salmon is hatchery or wild. The hatchery is known to stay close to homes and spends less time under the ocean compared to the wild salmon. Thereby exposing hatchery salmon to the harmful environment compared to the wild salmon (Improving Habitat for Salmon and Steelhead 2). As such, wild salmon tends to have a positive health implication to individuals who consume it.
Food economics has had an impact on the people who produce wild salmon. Food economics has contributed to Northwest Wild Salmon problem; the value of Northwest Wild Salmon has depreciated with time as their productivity has largely declined. The producers face major problems in the markets which they rely on for signal on the status of resources. As a result, the producers have failed to account for their full range of benefits and cost of environmental resources. This is what is normally termed as the market distortion (Antieau 91). When the market distortion exists among the producers, the Northwest wild salmon becomes underpriced and overused, and sometimes it becomes overpriced and underused at the same time (Thompson 29). This phenomenon has also some implication to the environment. As such, the national forest plays a crucial role in the ecological chain of Northwest Wild Salmon. The salmon spends 50 per cent of their life in freshwater. Upon maturity, they go back to the natal streams for reproduction purposes. This has enabled the forest service to constantly maintain the quantity and quality of this habitat (Improving Habitat for Salmon and Steelhead 2). The efforts of the forest services have been aimed to improve the capability of wild Salmon habitats in order to produce many smolts. Therefore, issues to do with the management of the Northwest Wild Salmon involves the trade-off that exists between the economic consideration and the natural environment conditions (National Research Council Staff 120). Therefore, it is important for the environmental and the food economic factors to be provided equal priority in situations where there are negative economic and environmental consequences.
There is absolute ethics connected to eating Northwest wild salmon. In terms of environmental ethics, there is great stress on the duty of nature rather than duties connected to posterity. Eating Northwest wild salmon has non-anthropocentric implications which have ethical significance. There are issues of uncertainty and acceptability of risks which might come up in connection with implication on the ecosystems. It is important that the Wild Salmon needs to be preserved. People need to consider the industrial, recreational, and scenic use as a basis to offer a baseline to value wild ecosystems like Northwest wild salmon in economic terms (Thompson 29). The main ethical task has been appreciated in terms of coming up with a rationale that would value and preserve the wild salmon ecosystems. Given the underlined orientation, one would expect that food product like the transgenic salmon, which could have an impact on the wild salmon population would be one of the contentious application from the environmental ethics. Additionally, agriculture of the wild salmon is at the time viewed to be unethical to the environmental values existing in the context of North America. This is because the agricultural technologies are among the potential consumers which contribute to health risk among humans. In addition, the use of land for agriculture competes with the preservation of wilderness.
- Antieau, Kim. The Salmon Mysteries. Ruby Rose’s Fairy Tale Emporium, 2010.
- Improving Habitat for Salmon and Steelhead. U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Region, Fish and Wildlife, 2015.
- National Research Council Staff. Upstream. National Academies Press, 2013.
- Thompson, Paul B. Food Biotechnology in Ethical Perspective. Springer, 2010.