No Bones About It

I am not spoiled, but there is one thing that I have never had to do because someone else (my mom and my husband) has always done for me...prepare salmon. Brian enjoys cooking and particularly likes salmon patties so that is one of the things that he makes for us sometimes. I like them too, so when I found a recipe for Salmon Pie I thought I would try it. Brian wasn't home, so I had to prepare the salmon from the can myself. Now, I knew it had bones in it that had to be removed and I had even seen my mom and Brian removing them on occasion, but apparently I had never looked that closely because I was shocked at what I found in that can. Not only was there a long backbone of several vertebrae, but there were also hundreds of small rib bones and to top it all off skin! I wasted 30 minutes and got a crick in my neck from sifting through that stuff! What kind of industry cuts the head off of an animal then stuffs it in a can can calls it ready for consumption? Would you buy beef if it came complete with hide and hooves? ( I know I wouldn't. We ended up in an Asian grocery store in California a couple of years ago and as we passed the meat counter piled high with cow lips and tongues and livers Ryker said, "I think we need to get outta here." I agreed.) Why have we been buying salmon this way for the last 100 years (I just read a book about , among other things, the salmon industry in Alaska, that's how I know it has been that long)? Why haven't consumers demanded a product that comes out of the can ready to throw in the pot? I understand that if I am going to buy a whole fish I'll have to clean it, debone it, etc., but if I buy a processed food I want it to actually be processed.
As I was mentally ranting and raving, much like above, I realized. It never takes Brian or Mom this long to prepare salmon. Brian and Mom don't have the patience to take out every little bone. I've been eating these things for the last 30 years!! Sure enough, when Brian came home and I mentioned my complaints he said, "They cook out. They're so small you don't even notice them. They won't hurt you." Of course I had to agree since I have lived through all of my salmon meals to date, its just the principle of the thing now. So I call on all of you that are fed up with eating bones and peeling skin off of canned fish to write your congressmen and demand that cleaned, boned, skinned salmon appear in our cans in the future! Salmon eaters of the world UNITE!