Updated toolkit docs available here for download.
Update July 2011: Stay tuned for a link to our new web-page that will bring an entertaining and informative twist to this issue… coming in 2012!
Is it wild... or is it farmed?
The vast majority of the consumer public, particularly in the US, is unaware of the threats posed by net-pen salmon farming. Most think of farmed salmon as a healthy and responsible choice. In 2006, 93% of Canadian farmed salmon was sold in the United States, and currently over 50% of the salmon consumed in the US is farmed.
As citizens of the Pacific coast, we’re concerned about the impact our buying choices have on wild salmon.
We believe the SUPS campaign, where grocery store shoppers are encouraged to shift their buying habits and engage with retailers—requesting that net-pen farmed salmon be removed from their shelves in favor of sustainable alternatives—can help shift the industry to operations that do not harm wild salmon or the ecosystems they depend on.
What’s the Problem with Salmon Farms?
In net-pen salmon farms, hatchery salmon smolts are reared to adult size in floating pens containing hundreds of thousands of fish. They are fed a diet of pelletized fish meal, oils, and grains such as soy, laced with antibiotics. They are also frequently bathed in “Slice” —aka emamectin benzoate, a shellfish-killing toxin— to remove sea-lice.
These “salmon feedlots” are usually in protected bays close to river-mouths. Ironically these areas are migratory habitat for wild salmon, such as pinks, Chinook, coho, sockeye, chum, and steelhead— and on salmon farms harmful and sometimes deadly bacteria, viruses and sea-lice multiply in proportion to the number of fish present.
Fish feed pellets, likely containing antibiotics (and petroleum-derived synthetic astaxanthin, which colours a farmed salmon's flesh orange instead of grey).
As the BC-based Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform (CAAR) notes on their site, these net-pen farms can hold 500,000 to 750,000 farmed salmon in an area the size of four football fields. This is a biomass equivalent to 480 Indian bull elephants, or “2400 tons of eating, excreting livestock.”
Most salmon farms in Canada and the US are stocked with Atlantic salmon. This species, foreign to the Pacific coast, has escaped torn net-pens by the hundreds of thousands over the years.
It’s important to note that all Atlantic salmon for sale in grocery stores and restaurants is farmed. There is no “wild Atlantic salmon” for sale anywhere in North America, because native stocks in the Atlantic are on the verge of extinction.
Salmon farming sounds innocuous, but unfortunately it has had devastating effects on wild salmon, steelhead and trout by spreading sea-lice and disease. This is part of the reason that Canada’s Sea Choice program and the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch programs have red-listed net-pen farmed salmon in their “AVOID” category for seafood shoppers.
Needless to say, the impacts of accumulated feed and excrement on the seafloor are considerable, adding to the alarming problems of parasite and disease transfer. (For more information on sea-lice, see CAAR’s page here or this great cartoon, “Wild Salmon in Trouble,” by Watershed Watch.)
There are also human health concerns with eating net-pen farmed salmon associated with the presence of antibiotics, PCBs, dioxins and chlorinated pesticides.
Dubious science and media spin have helped Big Salmon become a $650M industry in Canada.
Salmon farming in both Canada and the United States has sparked regulatory battles like those over asbestos, lead, and cigarette smoke. Much pseudo-science has been employed by both industry and government agencies to obscure the disease and ecological impacts and delay regulation.
Because of the potential profits to be made— the salmon farming industry in Canada alone is valued at $650 million, most of it packaged for export— the pressure to farm salmon in net pens is growing and will continue to grow. Unless turned to methods that are more sustainable, the explosive growth of salmon farming will be catastrophic for wild Pacific salmon, as well as for salmonids on the east coast, as it already has been for salmon and sea-run trout in Scotland, Ireland, and Norway.
Why We Created SUPS
It’s vital that those who care about wild salmon—citizens, chefs, fishermen, NGOs, First Nations and others—help educate their friends and colleagues and other consumers, especially in the US, about the true impact of their choices at the supermarket. We hope the SUPS campaign will offer tools to help people re-evaluate net-pen farmed salmon as a choice for the dinner plate.
Salmon farming has been a disaster for salmonids in Europe and Canada (see footnote for citations) and while it is not yet a major presence in the US, it may become one, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is reviewing their policies on aquaculture in Federal waters.
BC First Nations leaders gather to protest salmon farms at an October 2009 rally in downtown Vancouver.
The net-pen salmon farm industry in Canada is not a Canadian industry, nor do its profits remain in Canada. Here as in most of the rest of the world, net-pen salmon farming is dominated by three Norwegian multinationals: Marine Harvest, Cermaq, and Grieg. Ninety percent of BC’s 130 salmon farm licenses are owned by these companies.
For the past decade several NGOs, First Nations leaders such as Chief Bob Chamberlin, and researchers like Alexandra Morton have engaged with these corporations repeatedly, encouraging and pressuring them to do the right thing by switching from net pens to closed containment systems. But because making needed changes will lessen their profit margins, they won’t—unless customers demand it.
SUPS Strategy—Consumers Demand Change
U.S. consumers have a tremendous impact on the direction that this industry ultimately takes and on the future of wild salmon stocks on our Pacific coast. As noted above, over 90% of Canadian farmed salmon is sold in the United States, and over half the salmon consumed in the US is farmed.
By launching SUPS and collaborating with Waterkeeper organizations, concerned citizens, First Nations and NGO allies from California to Alaska, our goal is to shut down the net-pen salmon farming industry on the Pacific coast, and hopefully, all of North America.
This is wild. And delicious, thanks to Chef Rob Clark of C Restaurant.
The SUPS campaign will inform salmon consumers that farmed salmon is not a sustainable choice, and encourage customers of Costco, Safeway, Tesco, Kroger, SuperValu, and Trader Joe’s to give their corporate officials this same message. These companies want to be sustainable, and they need to be encouraged in their efforts by consumer demand.
In January of 2010, discount chain Target, on the advice of the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s SeafoodWatch program and other proponents, dropped net-pen salmon from over 1,700 stores.
What You Can Do
• Click here to ask for our free 2-DVD SUPS kit that offers a NBC newsreel, a cartoon on pink salmon, and a short feature documentary, “Farmed Salmon Exposed,” by award-winning filmmaker Damien Gillis. The 23-minute film has been screened by salmon lovers from Washington, DC to Norway. Each of the videos deals in a different way with wild Pacific salmon and the problems with farmed salmon.
The kits give you all you need (except popcorn and a digital projector) to host a movie night for friends and colleagues, and it end with current addresses of retailers and talking points to send letters.
• Purchase only sustainably caught wild salmon or other fish species instead of farmed salmon grown in net-pen systems.
• Use Seafood Watch or SeaChoice cards when shopping. Ask your retailer if the salmon you are purchasing is wild, and if not, why not. Out of the summer-fall season, wild salmon is generally flash-frozen and many chefs recommend it for flavour and quality over farmed fish that has not been frozen.
• Again, note! There is no “wild Atlantic salmon” legally for sale in grocery stores or restaurants anywhere in North America.
• Write a letter to your local retailer and tell them that until they stop selling farmed salmon that you will not be shopping there. Encourage them to shift to selling either wild salmon or salmon farmed in closed containment systems. (For a sample letter, click here. For a list of retailers that sell farmed salmon, click here.)
[1] Ford JS, Myers RA (2008) A global assessment of salmon aquaculture impacts on wild salmonids. PLoS Biol 6(2): e33. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060033. See also L. Neil Frazer. Sea-Cage Aquaculture, Sea Lice, and Declines of Wild Fish. Conservation Biology, 2008; DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.01128.x. See also Hutchinson P, editor (2006) Interactions between aquaculture and wild stocks of Atlantic salmon and other diadromous fish species. Proceedings of an ICES/NASCO Symposium held in Bergen, Norway, 18–21 October 2005. ICES J Mar Sci 63:(7).
