Six of the eight Chilean salmon farmers in the Global Salmon Initiative (GSI) increased antibiotic use in 2021 compared to levels from 2020, according to numbers available in GSI's annual sustainability report.
The results seem to confirm a trend on increasing antimicrobial use: last year, five of the eight Chilean GSI member farmers had upped doses, and the GSI numbers now come on the heels of a report from Chile’s National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service (Sernapesca) indicating salmon farmers increased their use of antimicrobials in 2021 to levels not seen since 2017.
On a global level, GSI said average antibiotic use dropped 48 percent since 2013. GSI calculates the amount of antibiotics used as the amount of active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) employed in grams per metric ton (MT) of fish produced (LWE).
In Chile, the two salmon-farming firms that already had the lowest use of antibiotics managed to lower their antimicrobials even further. Blumar led the pack with the lowest use, registering 168.71 grams API per MT, dropping 38.5 percent from its 2020 levels of 274.36 grams. That amount was followed by Australis Seafoods, with 194.31 grams API per MT – a 3 percent decrease.
The rest of the group all increased antibiotics use in 2021. Ventisqueros was the highest user at 878.92 grams API per MT, a 58.2 percent jump from 2020 levels. Next came Salmones Camanchaca at 862.2 grams (up 23.1 percent), Salmones Austral at 856.14 grams (a 21.6 percent increase), Aquachile at 807.25 grams (increasing 23.4 percent), Cermaq at 411.33 grams (up 28.3 percent) and Multi X at 402.08 grams (a 16.1 percent increase).
“As farmers, we have a responsibility to ensure a sanitary environment and [to] protect the health and welfare of the fish under our management. At times, this means we have to use antibiotics to ensure the health of our fish, in the same way we as people use antibiotics to fight off illness. We only ever use antibiotics following the direction of a veterinary prescription, and they are only used under close instruction from certified fish health professionals,” GSI said in its report.
Chilean aquaculture authority Sernapesca has advocated for lower antimicrobial use through the implementation of measures including an online system of veterinary prescriptions, antimicrobial-free certification, the manual of best practices, and increased information transparency. In 2020, it 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.
However, according to salmon industry groups, issues stemming from COVID-19 pandemic generated logistical complications that resulted in delays in harvesting and processing times, which led to the extension of production cycles. The longer cycles prolonged exposure to pathogens and harmful algal bloom events that occurred in the regions of Los Lagos and Aysén during 2021, additional stressors that affected the immune responses of the farmed salmon, resulting in an increase in ocurrences of piscirickettsiosis, which required medicinal treatment.
GSI was created in 2013 as a collaborative effort by many of the world’s largest farmed salmon producers to push for collective efforts on sustainability initiatives.
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