Chile’s salmon industry used the equivalent of 334 tons of antimicrobial treatments in 2019, bringing the antimicrobial consumption index (ACI) down to 0.034 percent, Chile’s national fisheries and aquaculture service Sernapesca reported.
The ACI for 2019 is the lowest since the measurement began in 2012, when the index reached 0.041 percent. After having peaked in 2015 at 0.063 percent, the industry had been working to bring the number down despite the increase in harvested salmonid biomass. ACI corresponds to the percentage relationship between the amount of antimicrobial treatment used and harvested tons of biomass.
Of the total, 96.5 percent of the antimicrobials were administered in the productive stage at sea and 3.5 percent in the freshwater phase, according to the Sernapesca report. The most used active principle in freshwater (70.1 percent) corresponded to oxytetracycline, while in sea water it was florfenicol (98.6 percent).
Atlantic salmon was the main recipient of the treatments, with 90.8 percent in the sea phase. A total 91.4 percent of the antibiotics used went to treat Piscirickettsiosis (SRS), followed by 7.2 percent for Renibacteriosis (BKD), and 1.4 percent for Tenacibaculosis.
The lion’s share (58.1 percent) of at-sea treatments were performed in southern Chile’s Aysén region, followed by 35.9 percent in the Los Lagos region, and 6 percent in the Magallanes region.
In a move to further improve the country’s fishing sector, the government has launched the Program for the Optimized Use of Antimicrobials in Salmon Farming (PROA/Salmon) initiative, which seeks to maintain a progressive decrease in the use of these treatments in Chile’s salmon production through a comprehensive disease management plan. The first farming centers are expected to be certified under this new voluntary tool during the last three months of the year, according to Sernapesca.
The reduction so far has been thanks to the implementation of various measures, including the online system of veterinary prescriptions, antimicrobial-free certification, the manual of best practices, and particularly increased information transparency, which is essential for proper management and efficient antimicrobial use.
At the beginning of the year, Sernapesca announced that antimicrobial use in Chile’s salmon farming industry had decreased nearly 45 percent in the last five years and 6 percent during the first half of 2019 alone.
However, not all observers are convinced of the veracity of this information. In mid-September, marine conservation NGO Oceana accused a handful of Chilean salmon farming companies - Invermar, AquaChile, Acuimag, Aguas Claras, and Exportadora Los Fiordos – as being less than cooperative in providing information regarding the amount of antibiotics used in their production processes.
In March 2019, members of the Chilean Salmon Marketing Council, which include Cermaq Chile, MultiExport Foods, Australis, Salmones Camachaca, Blumar, Ventisqueros, Salmones Austral, Marine Farm, Salmones Magallanes, and AgroSuper (which owns Aquachile, Los Fiordos, and Verlasso), all pledged to pursue a 50 percent reduction in their use of antibiotics by 2025.
Photo courtesy of Alexander Gold/Shutterstock
