Baywatch star Pamela Anderson is part of the latest anti-salmon farming campaign with an organization helmed by a man who has argued that the global population should be reduced by several billion people.
Anderson, already on the board of directors of the radical Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, partnered with them to investigate the supposedly secretive world of salmon farming and film a PSA about alleged health and environmental risks.
She warned pregnant women that eating farmed salmon could be dangerous for their unborn babies, and claimed the fish farming industry is making it difficult for whales to “feed their families.”
Katie Pohlman of Eco-Watch, a liberal website devoted to “green” issues, wrote a favorable story about Anderson’s campaign for Alternet on July 18. In her article, Pohlman wrote about Sea Shepherd’s campaign to expose the damage to the environment caused by salmon farming, which she described as “an industry shrouded in secrecy.”
Sea Shepherd’s main argument against farm raised salmon is that they are “full of harmful chemicals” and it is healthier to eat wild salmon.
In the PSA, Anderson presented this view as a fact, stating, “Doctors and scientists are warning women that farmed salmon fat is high in chemicals that can be harmful to the development of their babies.”
But some doctors and scientists claim the differences between wild and farmed fish have been exaggerated.
According to an article on the health website Greatist, it is true that farmed salmon have more fat and store more “environmental contaminants.” Citing a 2007 study published in Environmental Science & Technology, the article also revealed the “substances” found in farmed salmon were “still about sixty times lower than the level of concern for human consumption that has been established by both Health Canada and the FDA.”
A Shape magazine article by contributor Dr. Mike Roussell mentioned that in 2011, Environmental Science & Technology published a study that discovered both farmed and wild salmon have been known to contain high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
Just in case the health angle was not compelling enough, Anderson also informed viewers that salmon farming is responsible for the decreasing wild salmon population, and therefore indirectly harmful to whales.
“Please do not put farmed salmon on your plate, and know by that simple choice, you are helping mother whales in Canada feed and raise their own healthy families,” Anderson requested.
Anderson’s activism is well established. She is on the Sea Shepherd board of directors and is a longtime PETA supporter. In 2015, she recreated the famous shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho for PETA’s campaign against meat and dairy farms.
But Sea Shepherd is no ordinary save the whales organization. It’s a radical group whose behavior against Japanese whaling ships prompted a U.S. court to rule them “pirates.”
According to The Guardian, the judge wrote, “You don’t need a peg leg or an eye patch. When you ram ships; hurl containers of acid; drag metal-reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders; launch smoke bombs and flares with hooks; and point high-powered lasers at other ships, you are, without a doubt, a pirate, no matter how high-minded you believe your purpose to be.”
Sea Shepherd’s founder and leader Paul Watson has also made his anti-human views very clear. In 2007, he claimed people were “killing our host the planet Earth.” Watson then called for reducing the human population to less than 1 billion people. At that time the world population was more than 6.5 billion. Now it’s even higher. His editorial called human beings the “AIDS of the Earth” and insisted that communities be no larger than 20,000 people.
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