Buckhead Beef to Distribute Skuna Bay Salmon

ATLANTA, GA -- Buckhead Beef has struck an agreement with Skuna Bay, a Vancouver-based salmon distributorship, to expand the company's products into four southern states, including Georgia.

But Skuna Bay has come under fire recently for some of its alleged practices, including reports of having to pay a $100,000 fine for the company's role in the death of 65 sea lions two years ago.

Fish Farm News & Science also says the company -- which is headquartered in Nooka Sound, BC, 18 miles away from the actual Skuna Bay -- misrepresented its product when it signed a deal to distribute its product at the U.S. Open. It says Skuna Bay's products are not raised in the open ocean, as the company claims, but on industrial fish farms owned by Greig Seafood, a Norweigan-based multimillion-dollar seafood company.

Calling Buckhead Beef "gullible," the website also says, "when the customers find out the unsustainable nature of in-ocean fish farm fish, all the sentient sea lions killed to put salmon in their mouths, it is highly unlikely they will buy it again, and too bad for Buckhead Beef."

• Sign up for the Buckhead Patch newsletter!

Another website, WildSalmonRecipes.com, says, "Grieg is a giant in the salmon farming industry, selling roughly 90,000 tonnes of farmed salmon globally each year. In 2010 alone, Grieg’s pre-tax profits totaled approximately $28 million. Meanwhile, a host of conservation groups, biologist, and concerned citizens have spent more than a decade urging Grieg to invest these profits in shifting their salmon farming operations to closed-containment facilities.

"Currently, there are 12 closed containment salmon farms either in construction or with fish stocked. Together these farms are anticipated to bring 16,000 metric tons of farmed salmon to market by 2016 ... We know Grieg cares more about profits than it does about protecting our coastal waters or the wild salmon and other marine species that call it home. That’s why we’re not buying Skuna Bay fiction, and why we’re not buying Skuna Bay salmon."

News of Buckhead Beef's contract with Skuna Bay was reported by SeafoodNews.com.