Ref:701/03

"We are going to be labeling packaged products with a 'color-added' label," Brian Dowling, a spokesman for Pleasanton, Calif.-based Safeway, said Thursday.

"At fish counters, we are putting up a laminated sign indicating the same."

Karianne Cole, a spokeswoman for Albertsons in Boise, said signs would be displayed in stores' fish cases, saying "color added."

Cincinnati-based Kroger Co., which owns Fred Meyer and QFC stores in the Northwest, said earlier this week that it would label farm-raised salmon and trout with the words "color added."

Each of the three chains is a defendant in separate proposed class-action lawsuits filed last week in King County Superior Court, accusing the companies of misleading consumers as to the origin of their salmon by failing to declare the artificial color.

The grocery chains' announcements do not make the lawsuits moot, said Paul Kampmeier, a lawyer with Smith & Lowney, which is handling the plaintiffs' case.

"There are still a whole bunch of consumers out there who were duped into purchasing this stuff before the grocery stores made these policy changes," he said.

The flesh of farmed salmon is naturally a grayish color. Free-swimming salmon's brightly colored flesh is the result of eating krill or other small crustaceans that contain astaxanthin or canthaxanthin, according to the British Columbia Salmon Farmers Association, a trade group.

The carotenoid pigments added to farmed fish food are synthetic versions of naturally occurring ones in the diet of wild fish, much like taking a vitamin C tablet instead of eating an orange, the trade group said. Pigments are added at levels that meet government standards, the association said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has required "artificially colored" or "color added" labeling on products containing such additives since 1995, although the pigments have been deemed safe for consumption.

"While the supplements do not affect the taste or nutritional value of the fish, we are modifying the product labels to share this information with our customers," said Keith Neer, a Kroger executive.

Salmon farms provide fresh fish year-round at inexpensive prices. But they have come under attack in recent years by some environmentalists, commercial fishermen and biologists.

The Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform in British Columbia last year organized a boycott of farmed salmon. Its main contentions:

•Fish-farming practices are environmentally unsound.

•Farmed Atlantic salmon compete unfairly with wild fish.

•The end product is 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 show their fish have higher levels of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids than wild Pacific salmon.