A court of law in southern Chile’s Puerto Aysén has levied a fine of CLP 344 million (USD 407,600, EUR 360,300) against a subsidiary of AquaChile – the country’s largest salmon farmer and second-largest worldwide – for reported infractions associated with the mismanagement of mortality in its salmon-production process.
The court ruled AquaChile subsidiary Los Fiordos failed to perform a timely extraction of daily mortalities from one of its centers, and neglected to properly store the extracted mortalities within 24 hours in compliance with containment and biosecurity measures. The company also failed to provide accurate information regarding conditions at its farms, Chile’s fisheries and aquaculture service Sernapesca reported.
The breaches were revealed in a series of audits carried out between April and May 2019 at the company's Gertrudis 2 center, located on the northern part of Gertrudis Island in the King Channel, Cisnes municipality, in the region of Aysén. According to the ruling, Sernapesca inspectors detected that, at the time of the inspection, the center lacked the technical and human capacity necessary for the extraction of daily salmon mortalities.
Los Fiordos failed to correct the problem during two subsequent Sernapesca inspections, despite the fact the center had been classified as at high risk of propagation of piscirickettsiosis, or salmonid rickettsial septicaemia (SRS); and caligus, which requires twice-daily mortality withdrawals to remain in line with Chile’s specific sanitary program for the surveillance and control of SRS, Sernapesca reported.
The Puerto Aysén court also found Los Fiordos "provided false information about the sanitary condition related to caligidosis, since [it] reported lower parasite infections than that which was verified … which constitutes delivery of unreliable or false information," the court said.
"A significant difference was found, 365.15 percent – a variation that with only four days of difference between monitoring is not consistent with the biological cycle of the parasite,' the ruling said.
Sernapesca said the judgment levied the maximum available sanctions for each breach in response to repeated malfeasance and frequent inconsistencies in Los Fiordos reports to Sernapesca.
“In fulfilling our supervisory role, it is not acceptable for aquaculture companies to ignore the notifications and observations made by our teams during farm inspection. In this case, several audits were carried out detecting significant deficiencies, which were not corrected in a timely manner and, the most serious, [this constituted] a health risk, considering the condition of the center,” Sernapesca Director Claudio Báez said.
AquaChile plans to appeal the ruling, saying that it did not have the right to defense “and the sentence presents flaws and errors in fact and law,” local publication SalmonExpert reported.
Photo courtesy of Sernapesca
