Chile proposes new rules reforming salmon farming industry

A new set of rules designed to reform the salmon farming industry have been proposed by the Chilean government.

The rules will set higher sanitary standards and set limits for growth rates of salmon farms, as well as encouraging lower use of antibiotics, according to Chile’s Diario Financiero.

In an announcement on Monday, 20 June, Chile’s Minister of the Economy, Luis Felipe Céspedes, said the laws are designed to make the industry more economically sustainable by slowing the permitted rate of growth of salmon farming operations, reducing the maximum capacity of pens from 11 kg per square meter to 8 kg per square meter and increasing fallowing periods of salmon pens from 21 months to 45 months.

“Looking at sustainability, when there are health risks, they may create conditions that hurt the competitiveness of the industry. What happened with the ISA virus is a good example, as short-term gains had health effects that turned into an impediment,” he said.

Felipe Sandoval, the president of industry group SalmonChile, said salmon farming companies mostly approved of the new measures, but called for faster adoption of the rules, as the proposed rules have been discussed between the government and industry for months already.

“The implementation must be done as fast as possible so as not to effective the competitiveness [of the industry],” he said.

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