A formerly dismissed lawsuit calling for grocery stores to disclose the use of coloring chemicals in farm-raised salmon will become active again after the California Supreme Court today ruled that state laws apply to the labeling dispute.
From the <em>San Francisco Chronicle:
Salmon raised in fish farms are naturally grayish but take on the orange hue of their free-swimming kin after consuming the chemicals canthaxanthin and astaxanthin. Those substances are also part of wild salmon’s natural diet, and the plaintiffs are not claiming that they are harmful to humans.
But the suits contended that the stores induced some customers to pay higher prices for salmon and led others to buy fish they normally would have shunned because of the artificial coloring.
The suit names Trader Joes, Albertsons, Whole Foods and Safeway among the defendants. Those stores and others in California will likely sell a higher percentage of farm-raised salmon this year than in previous years after monitoring agencies found both Coho and king salmon numbers to have dropped precipitously over the last year.
State high court OKs consumer suits over artificially colored salmon [SF Chronicle]
