Let me pose you a question. Can farm-raised salmon be organic when its feed has nothing to do with its natural diet, even if the feed itself is supposedly organic, and the fish themselves are packed tightly in pens, swimming in their own filth?

Bittman’s question challenges the adequacy of “organic” as a label when applied to industrial aquaculture. He points to two core criteria that consumers often assume organic implies: an animal’s diet should resemble what it would naturally eat, and its living conditions should meet meaningful welfare and environmental standards. By contrasting “supposedly organic” feed with salmon raised in crowded pens amid waste, he suggests that certification can become a technicality—focused on inputs—while ignoring the broader ecological and ethical realities of production. The rhetorical framing invites skepticism toward marketing claims and urges readers to evaluate food systems by outcomes (health, habitat, welfare, pollution), not just by compliance with narrow rules.