I read the editor recommended letters and two of them mentioned tithing. What is that?

> What I would say is, in a global economy,

> we're all globally responsible.

> I think Wal-Mart will make changes. It has to.

No it does not. And it will not, unless something big happens. Don't confuse your hopes with your expectations.

I'm sick and tired of people holding out this naive notion that a large for-profit corporation will suddenly become a bunch of flower children and start caring about the environment.

Corporations run on profit. period. Any CEO who guides her company with another goal, is soon replaced. Either by the stockholders, or by bankrupcy.

Walmart will move on this issue only if it turns into dollars. For instance, if some laws somewhere get passed, and enforced, and it costs them a lot of money to violate them and get caught. That's usually the best way. Ain't gonna happen this year, and maybe not this decade.

Another mechanism that works sometimes, and appears to work much more often, is if there's PR value. If Walmart gets bad press and bad gossip, that translates into dollars and they will act. They call it 'goodwill' - public perception, the people loving the company. Or not, as the case may be. Sometimes bad press causes a company to clean up its act. More commonly, it leads to a company to appear to clean up its act.

What would that look like? Executives of Walmart suddenly appear to turn into flower children. At least in the commercials. Commercials show how Walmart is cleaning up salmon poo! Well, you listen carefully and really they are developing a machine to do it. And you get on the web and do research, and it's just one guy with a patent and a prototype, and after they shoot the commercial, they drop the whole project. But continue to show the commercials.

Walmart gives college scholarships to smart Chilean kids! Three of them, fabulous scholarships, hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece. Tons and tons of photos at photo ops where everybody sees the same three kids, benefactors of good old Walmart. The kids go on a worldwide speaking tour. Especially to places with Walmart stores. Total investment: Thirty million dollars for the promotion, one million dollars for the scholarships. And their classmates stay back home and work Salmon for the rest of their lives. But you never see that on TV.

PR is very tricky - sometimes it works too well, sometimes not well enough.

Costco sells Alaska salmon, at least here. There are laws that require place-of-origin labeling. If anyone's switching labels or mislabeling salmon, they're breaking the law. Also, many Alaska fishing organizations use their own distinctive regional labeling. Examples are Copper River, Aleutia, Kenai Wild. They know where their fish is being sold and where it's not being sold, in case anyone's counterfeiting. (You're right that it does happen -- there was a recently big New York Times expose on how several grocers and restaurants were falsely labeling farmed salmon as wild.)

. . .Also, "Real Fish Don't Eat Pellets." Those are bumper stickers that have been sported by cars and trucks here in Alaska over the years.

Alaskans have done many, many stupid things over the decades -- too many to count -- but one thing we have done right is manage our salmon stocks. Major environmental organizations say so, at least. I think it's a good idea to support good environmental stewardship any way possible. (However, there are some threats to that good stewardship from some terrible Murkowski administration policies and the possible development of a huge open-pit mine near Bristol Bay, but I digress.)

As for concerns about high prices of Alaska salmon, consumers can always buy pink salmon, which is the cheapest and most plentiful of the five Alaska varieties. It's so cheap that it's regularly donated to food banks and school lunch programs. I personally would choose canned pink salmon (and of course, canned red salmon) over so-called "fresh" farmed salmon every time. In fact, I just came back from the grocery store, where I bought some canned reds for my family.

Mr Fishman's profile of the farmed salmon industry seems incomplete to me, because it does not address the American fish industry. I grew up on Kodiak Island, and the salmon fishery was the main economy during my childhood. I even spent a summer on a commercial salmon seiner as a deckhand.

It's been 20 years since I left there. I'm told things are very different today; that Fishermen can't get a price for their catches that will cover the expenses of running a boat, that one can see boats lying dormant in the harbor at the height of fishing season. I've heard that people can't afford the fuel and insurance for their boats. An entire industry has been decimated.

You can probabaly still start a fight in Alaska, by asking if the stocks of Alaskan wild fish have been well-managed. But after all the efforts to protect man and fish, and efforts to patrol the International boundary that prevents foreign nations from stealing the American fish stocks, it seems a trememdous betrayal to buy the vastly inferior Chilean fish.

Farmed fish is flabby in texture and nearly tastless. It has likely been dyed and, as Mr. Fishman points out, been fed additives. Would you be able to tell the difference? If you've eaten sushi-grade salmon,marveling at its taste and texture, most likely eaten wild salmon. That's what you're missing, and that's what the regulated American fishery has worked so hard- at times, risked their lives- to bring to you.

I would like to know who the other unions are that are working with Sierra Club on the issue of ocean "farming" of salmon. Here in Hawaii we are told that sea farming will be a good economic engine for our depleted stocks of fish ---- and create more jobs. Our legislators in the state do not appear to be interested in hearing about any negatives either - when it came to ocean liners and dumping of waste around the islands it took years for any action on their trash practices. We have 4 major Wal-Marts on the island of Oahu - with another one being built. The Wal-Mart effect is here - and yet no word from our local press, and just some local union voices over the mega-stores. The issue of what is in the Wal-Mart - and how it remains so cheap - is a question that is VERY rarely asked by anyone who steps into the store. It should be the first question of a conscious person.