Growers and Grocers

The Salmon Safe Label

One of the most damaging side effects of agriculture is the soup of fertilizer, pesticides and sediment that flows from farmland after rain or irrigation. Salmon, one of the Northwest United States’ signature fishes, are particularly sensitive to water contamination: they need water that is clear, cold, and pure.* Streams and rivers play an important role in the life cycle of salmon, as that is where they mate and lay their eggs, and where young fish spend their first few years before heading out to the open sea.

To help consumers know if the farm that grew their vegetables or fruit is taking care of salmon habitat, the Pacific Rivers Council created the “salmon safe” label in 1995. In recent years, the label program became big enough to form its own organization called Salmon Safe, Inc.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer described the addition of eggs to the “salmon safe” list, where they joined previously listed products of vegetables, fruit, milk, herbs and wine. Obtaining a “salmon safe” label is somewhat like obtaining organic certification, as the article’s author, Robert McClure, explains:

Inspectors on contract to Stewardship Partners grade farms on water use, erosion control, animal management, pesticide and fertilizer use, management of sensitive areas and preservation of biological diversity.

The criteria don’t forbid every single farming practice that’s bad for salmon. They simply seek to ensure that, on balance, the farmer is helping the fish because the operation earns a positive score in all six categories, Nussbaum said.

For example, instructions to inspectors list more than three-dozen pesticides known to be harmful to salmon. The inspection guidelines say the pesticides “require special consideration,” but don’t ban them. Their use could be permitted if the farmer can prove “a clear need for use of the pesticide, that no safer alternatives exist, and that the method of application (such as timing, location and amount used) represents a negligible risk to water quality and fish habitat.”

Pesticides are out of the question for a fair number of salmon-safe farms because they’re also certified organic, a more demanding standard.

Take Blue Dog Farm, a blueberry and raspberry operation where Stewardship Partners hired workers to remove thickets of blackberry bushes along Ames Creek and replace them with native plants. The work was paid for by Puget Sound Energy to make up for native vegetation removed for a power line, said David Burger, executive director of Stewardship Partners.

Those native plants will provide homes and dinner plates for amphibians such as tree frogs, reptiles such as garter snakes, birds such as robins and for bugs that are eaten by salmon. They also help stabilize the waterway’s banks and filter out creek-clouding sediment in water draining into the stream.

The Los Angeles Times also wrote about Seattle’s new ad campaign about the Salmon Safe label here.

Ideas for Additional Labels

The “salmon safe” label seems like a reasonable idea, and got me thinking about some other labels that might be useful to consumers.

How about a “baby safe” label in the Midwestern Corn Belt? In an interview with Alternet, Michael Pollan talked about what happens to the extra fertilizer applied to corn fields in the Midwest:

[Extra nitrogen] goes into the roadside ditches and, in the case of the farms I visited, drains into the Raccoon River, which empties into the Des Moines River. The city of Des Moines has a big problem with nitrogen pollution. In the spring, the city issues “blue baby alerts,” telling mothers not to let their children use the tap water because of the nitrates in it [author’s note: nitrates can cause “blue baby syndrome” (methemoglobinemia)]. The Des Moines River eventually finds its way to the Gulf of Mexico, where the excess nitrogen has created a dead zone the size of New Jersey.

Or a “Gulf shrimp safe” label? In that same interview Pollan says

[The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is] a place where the nitrogen has stimulated such growth of algae and phytoplankton that it starves that area of oxygen, and fish cannot live in it. The dead zone hasn’t gotten much attention, compared to carbon pollution; but, in terms of the sheer scale of human interference in one of the crucial natural cycles, it’s arguably even more dramatic. Fully half of the terrestrial nitrogen in the world today is manmade, from fertilizers.

Or, perhaps it is time for a “Chesapeake safe” label for chicken, eggs and other meats. The NRDC report America’s Animal Factories includes this:

The runoff from manure applications poses a significant threat to Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay, which suffers from a serious nutrient pollution problem. A major source of this pollution is animal manure, which is rich in nitrogen and phosphorus. In natural bodies of water such as the Bay, a glut of these substances fuels the runaway growth of algae, ultimately leading to the death of fish, shellfish and other aquatic life. In the Chesapeake Bay, the excessive quantities of nitrogen and phosphorus have dramatically degraded water quality and fostered the growth of the toxic microbe Pfiesteria piscicida, which has been responsible for major fish kills.

Label Complications

I can see problems with the “baby safe” and “Gulf shrimp safe” labels, as not many corn farmers in the Midwest sell direct to consumers. Their product goes to the local grain elevator, is combined with other farmers’ crops, and then ships to feedlots, corn syrup factories, overseas markets, or numerous other destinations. Knowing how much of the high fructose corn syrup in your cola was grown using low-nitrogen-input methods would be nearly impossible. In addition, preventing fertilizer from entering bodies of water is quite difficult — imagine trying to capture and treat the water flowing from a 300 acre farm. But it is a major problem around the world, receiving attention from policymakers and environmental scientists (see the EPA Fact Sheet Protecting Water Quality from Agricultural Runoff (pdf) or Wisconsin writer Bill Berry’s column about runoff pollution, for example).

Containing wastes from animal factories is somewhat easier than controlling runoff from large corn farms, but certainly not easy — and the consequences of a waste lagoon failure can be dire, as thousands of gallons of untreated manure pour into nearby waterways. And even when the waste is fully contained nearby residents suffer from polluted air and ground water. In Northern California, Pacific Gas and Electric has been trying another idea for managing wastes from factory farms: digesters which create gases that can run electrical generators. Since the digesters are carefully built to avoid leakage (both liquid and gas), there is a stronger than usual financial incentive to contain the wastes. USDA and EPA also have programs to reduce the environmental impact of animal raising.

* Note: There is evidence that salmon play an important role in forest health. During the time when salmon are swimming upstream, bears catch the fish and bring some into the forest to eat. The bones and other leftover parts decompose and are an important source of nutrients for the forest trees and plants.

Image credit

Photo is from Tomhe’s Flickr collection, subject to a Creative Commons License.