Some salmon farmers in Chile have produced beyond the limits established in their environmental licenses, but overproduction comprises a very small percentage of the total amount of salmon harvested in the country and must be put into perspective, according to Chile Salmon Council Executive Director Loreto Seguel.
While presenting the council’s fourth annual sustainable impact report, Seguel called for the salmon-farming industry’s “strict compliance with the law” but also said that salmon farming is the most audited industry in Chile.
Seguel said there were six government inspections of salmon-farming operations in 2020, but this ramped up to 1,802 in 2023. Last year’s audits resulted in just 1.8 percent of the cases receiving a sanction, she said, which is below the nation’s overall industrial average.
Further, the government has called for salmon-farming firms to move their operations outside of nationally protected areas, but she said salmon-farming concessions cover just 0.03 percent of the area of water in protected parks, according to figures from the council.
“We’re not talking about 50 percent or 80 percent of protected areas here, and I have no problem in having that discussion with environmental NGOs,” Seguel said.
Seguel called on the public to be more critical of allegations from environmental NGOs, making special mention of Fundación Terram’s accusation that nine Chilean salmon-farming firms had racked up 95 cases of overproduction in the country’s natural reserves.
“You have to put it in perspective,” she said. “Terram denounced 67,000 metric tons of overproduction from 2012 to 2023, but if you consider that all the salmon harvested over that same time period reached 10,360,099 MT, that overproduction represents just 0.6 percent of the total harvest.”
Seguel acknowledged the use of antibiotics to combat fish disease continues to be an issue but said use had fallen 46 percent over the last three years. She praised an international work agreement with the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH) to control antibiotics use as an example of the industry efforts to employ innovative research to integrate alternatives to antibiotics.
Seguel called the Yelcho Project, the Chilean salmon-farming industry’s drive to reduce antibiotics while simultaneously increasing vaccines to prevent bacterial diseases, a good example of the industry addressing the antibiotics issue head-on.
“We are gathering the data and taking the appropriate measures [to drive responsible industry development],” Seguel said. “This is an industry that is too important for Chile.”
Salmon aquaculture contributes 0.9 percent directly to Chile’s GDP, she said, and when considering direct contributions, salaries paid, and the production chain, the total reaches ...
