British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver sparks fish fuss in Iceland

REYKJAVIK: “What a view!!” Britain’s celebrity chef Jamie Oliver exclaimed under a photo he posted on Facebook of a salmon farming cage nestled in a snowy fjord.

In doing so, Oliver unknowingly waded into controversy, sparking outcry among Icelanders who see farmed salmon as a threat to the island nation’s wild salmon population.

Oliver is due to open a restaurant serving Italian cuisine in the currently popular tourist destination of Reykjavik, on June 17, a national holiday.

Along with antipasto, lasagna and pizza, “Jamie’s Italian” may also serve salmon on occasion.

In his Facebook post of April 24, the restaurateur prided himself on being supplied with “sustainable fish.”

But the post angered critics who brand fish farming an environmental hazard.

“This is an industry that creates a lot of parasites, especially sea lice,” said Orri Vigfusson, head of the North Atlantic Salmon Fund, a privately-run conservation group which aims to restore wild salmon to their historic abundance.

Vigfusson said sea lice “are very bad” for the wild salmon. The parasites spread across fjords, infecting and killing the fish.

“I will never eat at your place and I will inform my clients to stay away,” travel agent Jon Gunnar Benjaminsson commented on Facebook.

“Very disappointing to see you doing business with those guys who are destined to severely damage wild Atlantic Salmon in Iceland with the massive salmon farms that are on the drawing board. Educate yourself before promoting this disgusting stuff,” he added.

While many other Internet users seem indifferent to the controversy, and appear eager to dine at the new eatery, anglers disapprove.

“On the planet I live on, that would never be called sustainable,” Haraldur Eiriksson, sales manager at Hreggnasi, one of Iceland’s largest angling clubs, told AFP.

The vast majority of the salmon sold in Iceland’s food shops is farmed, as wild salmon is rare and expensive. Jamie Oliver’s team did not expect such bad publicity. “We were quite surprised by the reactions,” Jon Haukur Baldvinsson, one of the partners of Jamie’s Italian, told AFP.

“We haven’t decided yet if we will put salmon on our menu,” he said.