Jon Rowley of Gourmet Magazine is telling us that salmon in our restaurants may have tapeworms lurking inside. Frozen salmon is okay, but raw salmon (sorry tartare lovers!) is right out. Especially, according to Rowley, if you are dining on wild Alaskan salmon where Diphyllobothrium latum (the tapeworm in question) is “fairly common”.
Yet, up there in AK, Sarah Palin spoke out publicly against the Clean Water Initiative, says Barry Estabrook also of Gourmet, making the fate of Alaskan salon more than dubious.
In something he calls, Salmongate, Estabrook explains how food politics has reared its head again and in this case showed that Alaskans, thanks to Palin, cared more about mineral mining than clean water for one of its most precious natural resources and assets for its economy–those yummy salmon, of course!.
How do these two problems with Palin and her salmon relate? Even though you can freeze your wild Alaskan salmon to make it safe, you’d better not count on there being as much in years to come anyway –not if Sarah Palin has anything to do with it.
Summer Johnson, PhD
(Thanks to Glenn McGee for pointing out this story.)