{"id":808046,"date":"2026-10-19T23:50:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T23:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/808046\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T23:50:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T23:50:18","slug":"avoid-chicken-fed-salmon-by-eating-irish-salmon-food-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/808046\/","title":{"rendered":"Avoid chicken fed salmon by eating Irish salmon &#8211; food expert"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The best way to avoid eating chicken fed salmon is to buy Irish salmon, a food expert has suggested.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Amid surging prices for traditional protein pellets, salmon farmers across Europe have taken to feeding their fish the innards of chickens.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It is a far cry from what salmon traditionally eat as wild animals, where they typically live on a diet of zooplankton and microscopic animals, supplemented sometimes by the eggs of other fish.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>On <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newstalk.com\/shows\/the-claire-byrne-show-2228535\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Claire Byrne Show<\/a>, food writer Dr Michelle Carmody said the news is a \u201cmicrocosm of a lot of the problems in the food system\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe could start looking at the welfare of the fish and the chicken,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat sort of life or processing has the chicken had before it becomes a fish meal?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlso, then the welfare of ourselves, our bodies, how it affects us, the welfare of the environment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1720673\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/2BEKBEB.jpg\" alt=\"An Atlantic salmon.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\"\/> A migrating salmon. Picture by: Alamy.com.<\/p>\n<p>Irish salmon farmers have indicated that they have no plans to rear their fish on chicken.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Which means anyone looking to avoid eating chicken reared salmon should consider buying Irish salmon, given food labels rarely offer an insight into an animal\u2019s diet.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat an animal eats or what has been put into an animal before we eat it isn&#8217;t very visible,\u201d Dr Carmody said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn an awful lot of food packaging, the ingredients aren&#8217;t the whole story about food and how the food is created, where that food comes from.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut in Ireland, it looks like 90% of our farm fish is actually farmed organically.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wild salmon\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>While salmon has long been an integral part of Irish mythology, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newstalk.com\/news\/iconic-irish-salmon-at-risk-of-extinction-2174515\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">their numbers have plummeted some 90% in just 50 years<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>They are officially Red Listed as a species, which means they are at risk of extinction.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe kind of don&#8217;t really notice it because there&#8217;s so much salmon still on our shop shelves,\u201d Dr Carmody said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don&#8217;t really notice that the original kind of salmon that we had here in Ireland is getting less and less.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Main image: A split of hens and a salmon. Pictures by: Alamy.com.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The best way to avoid eating chicken fed salmon is to buy Irish salmon, a food expert has&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":808047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[102,6636,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-808046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nutrition","tag-health","tag-nutrition","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/808047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}