The salmon scam: 'wild' often isn't.

If you've paid extra for fresh wild salmon in late fall and winter, you may have wasted your money.

Of 23 supposedly "wild" salmon fillets we bought last November, December, and March, during the off-season for wild-caught salmon, our analysis found only 10 that were definitely caught in the wild. The rest came from salmon farms. Why should you care?

* Cost. You deserve to get what you pay for. Wild salmon usually costs more than farmed. We paid an average of $6.31 a pound for salmon labeled as farmed (all of which was indeed farmed) compared with $12.80 a pound for correctly labeled wild salmon. Farmed salmon sold as wild was even more expensive: $15.62 a pound.

* Health. Farmed salmon, raised in pens, tend to accumulate more PCBs and dioxins than do wild. These industrial chemicals, which can cause cancer and reproductive problems, are fat-soluble and can stay in your body's fat tissue for years. Studies suggest that farmed salmon may have higher PCB and dioxin concentrations than many common foods.

LABELING AND MISLABELING

Under federal law, most supermarkets must label fresh and frozen seafood with its country of origin and note whether it's wild or farm-raised. Fish stores don't have to disclose that data, but if they do, the law says labels must be accurate. Our tests aimed to see if labels are truthful.

Our first round of shopping took place in the summer of 2005, at the height of salmon season. We bought some salmon labeled farmed and some labeled wild from markets in several states, then had samples tested for synthetic coloring agents fed to farmed salmon to turn their flesh pink-orange. Wild salmon acquire this color from the crustaceans they eat. Without coloring, farmed salmon would be gray. As you might expect when wild salmon are abundant, these tests found that all 27 salmon were labeled correctly.