MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chilean salmon industry faces new challenge

An association of 16 fishermen groups from Chilean Patagonia is calling on President Michelle Bachelet to freeze expansion of Chile's lucrative but environmentally-suspect farmed salmon industry.

Failure to do so could result in an international boycott against Chilean salmon, warned the Aysén, Reigon XI, Association of Artisan Fishing Organizations (AGOPA) in a statement released Friday. "Starting today, March 7, 2008, the Aysén Artisan Fishermen are launching the Moratorium on the Expansion of the Salmon Industry Campaign, asking the media to report on the environmental situation the salmon industry created in Region X as well as the effects it's also having on our region," the statement reads. On Jan. 5, 2006, then president elect Bachelet signed an agreement with Region X's Artisan Fishing Council to "cease handing out aquaculture concessions for large-scale farming until studies are conducted to determine exactly how much (fish farming) the waters and ecosystems can handle." More than two years later, no such study has been conducted. Nor has the government followed through on its promise to declare a moratorium on expansion of the 2.2 billion US dollar industry. Meanwhile, the problems that led to the original agreement have worsened. "If in the next two months the government doesn't declare the moratorium it already promised, the artisan fishermen will be obliged to immediately implement actions and campaigns in Chile and abroad to generate a boycott of Chilean salmon" AGOPA announced. Artisan fishermen, labor and environmental groups have complained for years that the salmon industry has run roughshod on workers' rights and on the environment – principally in Region X. Highly concentrated fish farms create tremendous amounts of organic pollution (feces and excess feed) that create "dead zones" in the surrounding waters. Lack of regulation has allowed salmon companies to pump their fish with antibiotics at levels unheard of in other salmon producing countries. Those and other environmental consequences take a major toll on native fish species, on which local, small-scale fishermen rely for survival. More recently Chile's salmon industry itself has begun to suffer as a result of its own unchecked greed, with concentrations of caligus (sea lice) and the appearance last year of Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA), a highly contagious virus that can be lethal to fish but does not affect humans, cutting into company profits. After posting growth rates of 25%, 20% and 28% respectively between 2003 and 2006, export sales of farmed salmon increased by just 2% in 2007. The slowdown has already resulted in layoffs. Norwegian-owned Marine Harvest, for example, recently announced that because of the so-called "biological situation" in Chile it would fire 1,200 workers (25% of its Chilean workforce) this year and reduce overall production by 40%. To reactivate the industry, companies are looking to expand into the relatively clean and disease free waters of Aysén, which already accounts for some 30% of the nation's salmon production. But problems have already appeared there as well. The government's National Fishing Service recently confirmed an ISA outbreak on a farm near Region XI's Churrucué Island. AGOPA claims the disease is present on several other area farms as well. According to AGOPA, the expansion of ISA into Aysén is a clear indicator that the salmon industry, unless it's stopped or severely regulated, will eventually leave Region XI in the same dismal shape as it has Region X. "We believe we have sufficient evidence, arguments and credibility (with support from the international community, environmental NGOs, environmental defenders and principally foreign consumers) to stop the commercialization of Chilean salmon, which is produced by exploiting labor and by destroying the environment," the AGOPA statement concludes. The Santiago Times