By: Mermaid Laura Reineke September 2024
You may think that salmon farming has nothing to do with us here in Henley, but you’d be mistaken. All salmon you buy is farmed, the labelling is misleading, and the RSPCA assured & Soil Association are being taken to court over this particular labelling of sustainable/organic salmon. There is no such thing.
Let me tell you about the hugely destructive aquaculture that is salmon farming: Open net salmon farming takes place mainly in Scotland, located in lochs, and estuaries. The non-indigenous salmon are hatched in freshwater tanks, the young are then raised in tanks or channels of running water for twelve to eighteen months. They are then transferred to cages along the seashore where they continue to grow until harvest.
Salmon farming in Scotland has grown exponentially since the 1970s, and is predicted to grow by 400,000 tonnes per year to 2030. Often touted as an environmentally-friendly alternative to other forms of protein, in reality it wreaks havoc on the surrounding environment, the welfare of the fish is disgusting, and the negative effect reaches as far as West Africa.
The salmon farms are plagued by parasitic sea lice, which form a cloud of disease around the open nets, not only eating the farmed salmon alive, feeding on their scales, mucus & blood, but are infecting wild fish that may swim by, and most worryingly the endangered (classed on the ICUN list) wild Atlantic Salmon. The farms are obligated to count the sea lice numbers, but only count around 5 fish per net, and only count the female lice – so a completely skewed result, all aimed at making the farms look better than they are. In fact in 2022 132/192 farms breached their sea lice limits. Jellyfish, the cleaners of the sea are plaguing the nets, and a population explosion due to warming waters of micro jellyfish are blocking the gills and killing the farmed salmon. It is a horrific show of the most appalling animal welfare.
Chemicals used on salmon farms are lethal to other types of sea life, killing prawns, lobsters and crabs in particular. In 2021 along the Scottish salmon farming industry used 89 tonnes of antibiotics – the only livestock industry to report increasing usage. Combined, Scottish salmon farms produce the same amount of waste as half of the Scottish human population. In 2020 over 5 million litres of hydrogen peroxide were used on Scottish salmon farms.
Salmon are carnivorous fish, and it takes over 440 wild caught fish to feed 1 farmed salmon. These fish are caught in huge numbers, often off the coast of W.Africa, totally devastating low-income communities, leaving them without food to live on and no food security. The farmed salmon are fed on this feed made out of the wild fish, and a soy pigment called Astaxanthin to colour the fillets pink – farmed salmon are naturally grey in colour. The fact that horrifies me most, is, in an attempt to eradicate the sea lice, farms are trying some barbaric practises. One of these is to use so called cleaner fish such as wrasse. These fish are taken from ecosystems across the UK, removed from their own territory, of which they are very protective and put into the nets. They aren’t even very good at their job, and are then killed at the end of a production cycle – usually about 18 months. Wrasse can live in the wild for up to 32 years.
Talking of animal welfare, on average over 25% of Scottish farmed salmon die before harvest, and in 2022 it was reported that over 16.5 million farmed salmon died prematurely.
The majority of salmon is bought by women of around my age and, and it is a huge money spinner for supermarkets, especially around Christmas. When asked if there is an alternative, I have to say, really there isn’t. No fish is sustainable; we have overfished our oceans to breaking point. The only sustainable option would be mussels. But as always, it is better to do one thing than nothing. If I can persuade you to consider taking Salmon off your menu, then I’ve done my one thing. I you are a chef, restaurant owner, or catering business, sporting or otherwise, please consider joining Wimbledon, O2 Arena, Chelsea Football Club, and over 250 other restaurants on taking farmed salmon Off The Table www.offthetable.org and lets protect our precious blue spaces and see a return to waterways full of life, fit for salmon, humans and wildlife alike.
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