Safe to Eat: Organic Cod

A Scottish aquaculture company, Johnson Seafarms, is bringing cod – a fish species headed toward extinction from overfishing – back to world markets. Seafarms has the world’s first large-scale commercial farmed cod operation and it’s organically certified.

The company is largest is Britain’s largest independently-owned farmed fish producer. Two years ago, the company switched its focus from salmon and began to pioneer organic farmed cod.

What is organic fish?

Currently the US National Organic Program (run by the USDA) doesn’t cover fish. In the UK, Johnson Seafarms has achieved the Organic Food Federation Cod Standard, which is officially recognized by the British Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for the production of organic cod.

The standards preclude the use of any unnatural or synthetic component which rules out antibiotics, herbicides, pesticides, hormone usage, or GM ingredients at any stage from hatchery to plate. Because of possible contamination and mercury levels, wild fish are not accepted as organic and cannot be labeled as organic.

Johnson Seafarms certified aquaculture practices include:

Rigorous rules on stocking density. “While many salmon farms have stock densities of 30 kg and more of fish per cubic meter of available seawater, we have densities of 12-14kg. This represents less that 2% of the volume of our cages being taken up by cod,” according to managing director Karol Rzepkowski.

Fish welfare and local wildlife concerns are implemented with the involvement of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Scottish National Heritage.

No use of colorants or dyes, pesticides, hormones or antibiotics.

A major criticism of conventional aquaculture is the use of fishmeal or fish oil in the feed, which results in a net loss of stocks from the seas. Johnson Shetland cod are fed fishmeal made from the byproducts of fish caught for human consumption in other words, no additional fish are caught to feed the farm-raised fish.

All inputs in breeding must be organic certified, including food supply.

“Over the last 50 years, increased fishing pressure, technological advances, coastal development and pollution have resulted in the loss of huge quantities of fish and other ocean wildlife and the habitat upon which they depend,” says to James Watkins, former chairman of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy. “Our ability to catch fish more quickly than they can reproduce, the rising demand for seafood and the degradation of important fish habitat have created an indisputable fish crisis.”

Says Karol Rzepkowski, managing director of Johnson Seafarms, “There are 800,000 tonnes of cod caught every year. In 1970, the catch was 3.5 million tonnes. In the US, in 1982, there were some 60,000 tonnes landed. In the past five years, the average has been about 10,000 tonnes.”

Scientists say the virtual disappearance of cod and other large species has led to a cascade effect. When large predators are no longer there, the fish they preyed on thrive. Cod, which used to sit on the top of the food chain, have been replaced by smaller fish which in turn, are eating young cod, making their recovery nearly impossible.

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