This may set some anglers and other consumers of salmon hopping mad. For two scientists at the Queen's University of Belfast maintain that wild salmon do not necessarily have a better flavour than the farmed fish. The main difference in flavour, they have it, is between river caught fish and those from the sea whether wild or farmed. Sea caught fish had more "salmon like" flavour and less "earthy flavour" than river caught fish. All this from an article by Linda Farmer and David Harper of the Department of Food Science at Queen's, and it appears in The Irish Scientist Year Book 1996.
Remember, we are talking about flavour, not about nutritional or health giving qualities of the fish. For the consumer of today is wary enough about all artificial or supplementary items fed to feather, or fin, or hide. And he is inclined to think that any thing shot or otherwise plucked from the wild must be superior in quality and purity - and safety.
But taste and flavour can be scientifically assessed, according to this article. A scheme was funded by the European Union and the NI Department of the Environment. During the 1993 and 1994 salmon seasons, wild and farmed salmon were collected from a number of sources. The fish, the article tells us, were subjected to sensory assessment in the Sensory Evaluation Unit at Newforge Lane in Belfast, using ten trained taste panellists. Each person scored every salmon for more than thirty "attributes", which fully described all aspects of its eating quality.
They found no evidence of "off flavours" arising from industrial pollution in salmon from any of the sources examined. Salmon from rivers received higher scores for attributes such as earthy odour", "earthy flavour" and "earthy aftertaste" than sea caught fish. But only in a few cases were earthy attributes sufficiently intense to cause a reduction in acceptability. The report states that earthy and muddy "off flavours" in drinking water and fish are common throughout the world - naturally occurring compounds. Geosmin, for example.
In summary, the sensory panel of ten trained palates could not affirm that wild sea caught salmon could be differentiated from that of farmed salmon. Farmed at sea, that is. The main difference, they found, was between river caught fish and those from the sea, whether wild or farmed. The article concludes that this study illustrates how sensory evaluation and instrumental analysis can be linked to examine objectively (Y's italics) the flavour characteristics of foods produced under different husbandry and nutritional regimes.
The angling reader, and others, will have a few points to make not covered by the article. Such as the defect of artificial colourants. We'll see.