China's surging demand for salmon is driving a global trade boom, but the country's preference for imported Atlantic salmon over locally farmed rainbow trout reveals a complex interplay between taste, origin, and price.
China’s demand for farmed salmon is growing at an unprecedented pace. In 2023, its imports grew by 46% year on year – with imports of fresh and chilled Atlantic salmon up 63%. This remarkable growth is reshaping the global seafood trade. Exporters from Scotland, Norway, Chile, Australia, Faroe Islands, Canada and Iceland are racing to supply the needs of this vast and rapidly evolving market.
At the same time, China’s efforts to produce its own Atlantic salmon have faced significant challenges, highlighting the need for substitutes like rainbow trout to meet the country’s growing appetite for seafood delicacies. An important shift occurred in 2018, when the Chinese government permitted rainbow trout to be labelled and sold as salmon. This decision blurred the distinction between imported Atlantic salmon and locally farmed rainbow trout, creating a more accessible option for cost-sensitive consumers. Trout is comparable to salmon in appearance and size, with firm and oily meat that has a similar orange-pink colour. Nutritionally too, the species are alike, as are the ways in which they can be cooked and prepared. In our new research which included taste tests, we found that many Chinese consumers could not distinguish between domestic rainbow trout and imported Atlantic salmon in blind testing. But when informed about the origin, testers’ preferences shifted strongly in favour of imported Atlantic salmon, highlighting the power of provenance in consumer tastes. Although people’s willingness to pay did not vary initially in our blind tests, it became a decisive factor once the origin of the fish was revealed. But we found that origin alone was not enough. For our testers to be prepared to pay higher prices, they also had to like the look, smell and taste of the product more, or be persuaded by its ecolabel (indicating environmental standards)
SALMON CHINA FOOD DEMAND CONSUMER PREFERENCES TRADE
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