The world’s largest fish farmer is taking issue with a new TV show, Hugh’s Fish Fight, that it says unjustly shines a negative light on the salmon aquaculture. The program, which airs on Britain’s Channel 4, has incited a flurry of reaction from the global seafood industry.
In the latest episode on Thursday night, celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall visits a Marine Harvest salmon farm in Scotland and criticizes industrial fish farming.
In response to the episode, Marine Harvest posted a three-minute YouTube clip and a collection of articles on its website, www.marineharvest.com, in an attempt to set the record straight and refute Fearnley-Whittingstall’s accusations, including his claim that 3 kilograms of wild fish are required to produce 1 kilogram of farmed salmon. In the YouTube clip, the narrator says, “In fact, fish farming is an excellent way of producing food. While a cow eats 8 kilos of feed to gain 1 kilo and a pig eats 3 kilos to gain 1 kilo, a farmed salmon eats 1.2 kilos.
“Some people are concerned that salmon farming will lead to a depletion of wild fish stocks,” continues the narrator. “The fact is that as salmon farming has grown from zero to 1.3 million tons produced, the volume of fishmeal produced globally has stayed at the same level since the 1970s. Fishmeal that was previously used to feed less-effective animals like pigs is now used to feed salmon and other farmed fish. This is a huge improvement. As fish farmers, we are dependent on wild fish for our feed. That is why we go to great lengths to ensure that the fish stocks used in our feed are sustainably managed.”
Marine Harvest is also among the five salmon farmers and fish-feed producers behind a new marketing campaign in British Columbia aimed at dispelling misinformation about farmed salmon.
