The three lawsuits, proposed as class actions, were filed Wednesday against the Kroger Co., Safeway Inc. and Albertsons Inc., said lawyer Paul Kampmeier of Smith & Lowney of Seattle.

``Pink sells salmon,'' he said. ``To artificially color salmon without giving that information to consumers, we believe that's unfair and deceptive, and it's also against federal law.''

The flesh of farmed salmon is naturally grayish. Wild salmon's brightly colored flesh is the result of pigment the fish get from eating krill or other small crustaceans, says the British Columbia Salmon Farmers Association, a trade group. The same pigments are added to the diets of farmed fish to give them the same color, it says.

A spokesman for Cincinnati-based Kroger said the company had not seen the lawsuit and declined to comment. Representatives of Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons and Pleasanton, Calif.-based Safeway did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

The lawsuits, filed in King County Superior Court in Seattle, seek unspecified damages and a court order requiring the chains to inform shoppers that the salmon are artificially colored.

Salmon farming has come under attack in recent years by some environmentalists, commercial fisherman and biologists.

The Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform in British Columbia last year organized a boycott of farmed salmon, arguing that the fish-farming practices were environmentally unsound, that the farmed Atlantic salmon compete unfairly with wild fish and that the end product was neither as tasty nor as healthy as free-swimming salmon.

Salmon farmers say they work to minimize the environmental impact of their industry and note that U.S. government data shows their fish have higher levels of beneficial Omega-3 fatty acids than wild Pacific salmon.

On the Net:

Smith & Lowney: www.smithandlowney.com/salmon/