UK diners increasingly choosing not to choose salmon

For millions of Britons, salmon is increasingly falling from favour: home cooks and restaurants are preferring trout instead. More than 300 UK chefs and restaurants are backing Off the Table, a campaign against eating farmed salmon run by the WildFish conservation charity – a number that has more than doubled over the past year.

Several leading restaurants have ditched salmon in recent years. Suppliers are reporting increases in trout orders from 36% to 54% year on year.

A leading chef said trout has seen more interest in recent years among customers, "increasingly appearing on restaurant menus. The delicate nature of trout makes it very versatile, easy to pair and suitable for use in a variety of homemade dishes," he added. "It's a super healthy fish too, packed with omega-3 fatty acids and protein, and it's low in saturated fat."

Restaurant chefs have spoken previously of concerns over antibiotic use, sea lice (which affect wild salmon and trout) and the amount of fish-based feed consumed by farmed salmon.

Rachel Mulrenan, Scotland ­director for WildFish, says chefs shouldn't use farmed sea trout. "We see no differentiation between open-net salmon farming and open-net trout farming in Scotland's coastal and freshwater lochs," she said. "The issues related to salmon farming [including sea lice, chemical use and water pollution] are the same for sea-raised trout."

• Read the full report in The Guardian, 5 Jan 2025

NOFF adds that as far as we can ascertain, all open net pen farmed ocean trout sold in Australia come from Macquarie harbour, where they are indistinguishably part of the industrial aquaculture operations threatening the Maugean skate. There are rainbow trout farms on the mainland but the fish are kept in the freshwater phase and their flesh is white.