Chile’s farmed salmon industry has roared back to life following a lengthy slump triggered by an outbreak of infectious salmon anemia (ISA) in 2007.
New laws requiring salmon farms to be more spread out from each other, improved sanitary measures and the use of more coastline with new farms in the Magallanes region of Chile have helped put Chilean salmon back on the map. As a result, the total production volume for 2011 exceeded 500,000 metric tons. This is the first time production volume has reached such heights since before the ISA outbreak. Increased salmon prices allowed exports to reach a record USD 3 billion.
The rosy numbers have Chile once again setting its eyes on Norway, the world’s top farmed salmon producer. Before the ISA outbreak, Chile had been nipping at Norway’s heels thanks to an incredible 15-year run that saw salmon production expand by 2,200 percent. Between 1991 and 2006, the industry’s annual earnings grew from USD 159 million to more than USD 2.2 billion, according to a report by SalmonChile, Chile’s association of farmed salmon producers.
The long sustained surge came to a halt in 2007 as ISA spread through Chile’s Los Lagos and Aysén regions. Forced to eliminate infected fish, harvest healthy fish early and in many cases shut production down altogether, Chilean salmon producers saw their sales begin to dip, most severely between 2008 and 2009. Some 25,000 direct and indirect industry jobs were consequently lost.
Now, fishing undersecretary Pablo Galilea estimates that in 10 years Chile could be producing 1.5 million tons a year of farmed salmon. Job losses have been recovered, with unemployment rates in the Los Lagos and Aysén regions at 3.7 percent and 4.3 percent, respectively, significantly lower than the national average of 7.2 percent. The salmon industry has fast become a focal point of interest for foreign investors.
A number of challenges still face the salmon industry, with Pablo Longueira, the minister of economy, development and tourism, admitting that “in this industry, as in no other, bad practices of some can infect the many companies involved in a serious and responsible way. We cannot allow this because an industry like this will suffer. We cannot relive the damage and the collapse that we experienced a few years ago.”
Thus on top of the implementation of new laws, Galilea has proposed a restructure of the production model and redefinition of public and private sectors to avoid committing the same errors as prior to the outbreak.
