Amid a strained atmosphere in Chile that has pitted environmentalists against salmon farmers, Chilean trade body SalmonChile recently released a sustainability report highlighting the economic boost its business has given the country, while also stressing its efforts at lightening its environmental footprint.
SalmonChile has published the sustainability report annually for eight years, which, according to SalmonChile President Arturo Clement, is a testament to member companies’ commitment to transparency.
“I want to emphasize the great effort they [member companies] have made to report progress in sustainability, which is a sign of the real commitment they have with environmental stewardship and the link with the environment, realizing that our activity is compatible with the environment and with the right of the people of the south [of Chile] to prosper,” he said.
In addition to economic, health, and environmental figures, the report contains data on labor, contributions to particular Chilean regions and their communities, international certifications in sustainability, and advances in investment and development.
SalmonChile underlined the sector’s exports, worth USD 6.6 billion (EUR 6.2 billion) in 2022, up 27.4 percent from 2021. The gains improved the industry's position as the country's second-largest export sector after mining.
In 2022, SalmonChile member companies made payments of more than CLP 1.8 trillion (USD 1.98 billion, EUR 1.87 billion) to small- and medium-sized suppliers that comprise the industry’s value chain – not considering payments made to food suppliers.
Meanwhile, the industry's community donations reached CLP 1.55 billion (USD 1.7 million, EUR 1.6 million) in 2022, including CLP 290 million (USD 320,000, EUR 301,000) to education initiatives, up 83 percent when compared to the previous year.
The report also highlighted the fact that salmon industry jobs in the country’s south have higher pay on average than equivalent jobs in the rest of the country, providing an important economic boost to the rural Los Lagos region, where 71 percent of sector jobs are located.
“The figures corroborate the importance of salmon farming both for the south and for the country [as a whole], given that our activity represents 2.1 percent of GDP,” Territorial Director of SalmonChile Tomás Monge said. “Our productive sector is synonymous with development, social mobility, and decentralization, and we must continue working to ensure that this contribution is maintained for future generations.”
In 2021, SalmonChile signed a clean production agreement that included measuring member companies’ carbon footprint – an indicator the trade body made public for the first time in the report.
The report also noted the salmon-farming sector decreased its antibiotic use by 19 percent in 2022, reaching 341 grams per MT harvested, putting the sector back on track to halve its antibiotic use by 2025 over 2018’s rate of 418 grams per MT, after a jump in antibiotic use in 2021.
Similarly, the use of antiparasitic drugs reached its lowest level since 2013, with 5.3 grams per MT harvested. However, the use of non-pharmacological tools – including mechanical and physical systems and hydrogen peroxide treatment – increased, with the rate reaching 0.42 treatments required per kilogram harvested, compared to 0.19 recorded in 2021. Incidents of adult sea lice in fish fell to its lowest since 2013, the report noted.
SalmonChile said the focus on disease prevention led to the low mortality rate of 5.2 percent in 2022, but 2022’s rate actually marked an uptick from the year before of 4.2 percent and from the historical low of 3.4 percent in 2020.
“In recent years, we have witnessed how salmon farming has increased sustainability efforts, with measures that contribute to reducing the impacts on the environment and ecosystems in which it is present, continuously improving sanitary practices in the operation while seeking to increase positive impacts on the territory and communities,” Esteban Ramírez, the general manager of the Salmon Technological Institute (Intesal), which belongs to SalmonChile, said. “The 2022 figures show a good health performance of our member companies, which also reflects their efforts to face their different challenges and gaps.”
ChileSalmon member companies have also certified that their biomass meets international standards, SalmonChile said, with 100 percent of the harvested biomass certified to the the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP), or GlobalG.A.P. sustainability standards.
Photo courtesy of SalmonChile
