Buying fish at local grocery store vs. big-chain supermarket

October 19, 2015 7:03 AM

What is the difference between the farm-raised $18.99/lb salmon at my rural grocery store and the farm-raised $5.99/lb salmon I can get at Stop'n'Shop in the nearest larger town? I live in CT.
posted by Dragonness to Shopping (7 answers total)

Maybe the country of origin? Farm-raised Atlantic salmon from my big city fishmonger rangers from $5.99-$14.99/lb depending on whether it's from Canada/U.S. or Scotland or the Faroe Islands.
posted by soren_lorensen at 7:15 AM on October 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's possible that one is flash-frozen and then thawed, and the other is fresh. (Quality may be fine for the flash-frozen product -- possibly even better -- but the unfrozen product is able to command a higher price.)

It's also possible that the rural market just doesn't go through enough to make their price point competitive, or that Stop'n'Shop is using salmon as a loss-leader, or that Stop'n'Shop has a relationship with the supplier and gets discounts (or more likely, all three of the above).
posted by pie ninja at 7:44 AM on October 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Farm-Raised Salmon" can mean a lot of things. Some types of farming are more polluting than others, some countries of origin have different regulations (including fair labor practices), and some types of farming produce healthier (and tastier) fish. The Monterey Bay Aquariums Seafood Watch list for farmed salmon lists which farm types and origins are considered environmentally sound, which I think tends to correlate with better-quality products.

I obviously don't know the origin or farming type of the fish available in the two stores you list, but I would ask the seafood departments for more information before assuming they're the same quality fish.
posted by jaguar at 7:53 AM on October 19, 2015

Best answer: More information on some of the problems with salmon farming in Chile, which (according to this nine-year-old article) is the reason salmon prices fell so much for certain types of salmon. (With the upshot being, "All those problems are manageable; it’s just that managing them costs money, and if there is no reason to spend that money, no incentive, then no one does.")
posted by jaguar at 8:11 AM on October 19, 2015

For $18.99/lb I would think you should be able to get wild-caught salmon which is not only significantly better for you but also doesn't involve the troubling ecological damage caused by the majority of fish-farming operations.

Some people choose to buy farmed salmon on the theory that they're making a more ecologically responsible choice and reducing pressure on wild stocks. Generally that's not the case. I won't go into it much further unless you want me to, as it's a digression from your question and I don't want to hijack the discussion. I will, however, offer to send you a "Friends don't let friends eat farmed fish" sticker direct from an area where people care deeply about salmon..
posted by Nerd of the North at 12:17 PM on October 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

There is just no way we can answer this for you definitively. There are too many variables: source, species, farming practices, product quality, treatment, shipping, vendor/supplier, what the market will bear. The way to answer it is to talk to the managers of the respective groceries, and follow that supply chain to the extent you can. I don't think they would find it weird of you to ask; people ask detailed questions about fish sources all the time.
posted by Miko at 7:50 PM on October 19, 2015

Response by poster: All the answers have been very helpful, thank you. I've marked one as best answer because it goes into most detail on how ostensibly the same product can be so cheap. It is disheartening to see that the linked article dates back to 2006 and not much seems to have changed since.
posted by Dragonness at 12:05 PM on October 21, 2015