What’s the general public view of salmon farms in Norway ? I recently read “Not on my watch” by alexandra morton and realized 80-90% of farm salmon trade is controlled by 3 norwegian companies . They have decimated wild salmon population in Pacific northwest (B.C canada )
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I was also shocked by the amount of money they spend on suppressing real scientific data and spread misinformation . It took 30 years for some of the farms to close in British Columbia (some are still operating ) .
I think it’s a filthy industry that is destroying our fjords, and salmon rivers, and we threw all our ethics out of the window, and pander to China, and the CCP to sell our salmon there.
I think it’s one of the worst industries we have in Norway, both from a environmental and moral standpoint.
If I had my way we would have banned having fish cages in the ocean.
In Norway? Fishery is a core industry here including salmon farming and it is generally tolerated here beside environmental organisations raising flags.
Norway promotes aquaculture globally through foreign and industrial policies, but many contracts operate according to local regulations, which falls far short of Norwegian standards. For example Norway promoted salmon farming in Argentina for years amounting to state visit a few years ago, but a few years later, the government banned farming altogether. That’s different from Chile where salmon farming exploded and causing all kinds of problems.
There’s not much negative talk about it in public, but critical voices can sometimes be heard in debate columns. It is a huge industry that creates many jobs in rural areas. Fish farming is also supposed to be a big part of the economic future of Norway when the oil runs dry. I almost never buy salmon, mainly because they don’t really eat what salmon are supposed to eat and thus become quite empty nutrient-wise. They are the hot dogs of the sea, as someone said.
I avoid eating salmon from the store since its farmed. There is other fish that I prefer and that is cought out in the sea like it should be.
Farmed anything is no good actualy but Norwegian salmon is pure poisen.
People need to spend more time reading the ingredient and how/where its made or from before bying.
Add: https://youtu.be/RYYf8cLUV5E
I think of them a bit like wind farms. A nice front put up by a PR team but destroying the environment irl. Better alternatives exist.
Fish farms are one of those holy cows that you can’t really touch in this country. A few years ago, in Tromsø, a coalition of Labor, the Socialists, the Red Party, and the Green Party passed a decision that all new fish farms in Tromsø had to use closed tanks (closed tanks eliminate both the risk of salmon escaping and spreading disease to wild salmon and the risk of wild salmon eating soy pellets from the farms). It created a lot of pushback from both the Minister of Fisheries (who at the time was from the Conservative Party) and the salmon farming organization. Just a few months later the decision was overturned as Labor decided to drop their support for it after the pushback.
Norwegian farmed salmon consistently ranks at the top of global indexes measuring sustainability. The sustainability is measured for the entire value chain. It produces high grade, healthy protein for human consumption with a feed factor between 1.2 and 1.5. The general public view in Norway is positive, especially concidering the amount of jobs the industry provides in rural areas. You will find that the people living closest to the industry, are the most positive also. People living in cities, far from the industry, are generally more sceptical (but still more positive than negative).
Trash
Norway is the largest whaling nation as well.
Frankly if Norway cant figure out how to reduce its wild salmon exports and become more sustainable in all fisherie they are going to run into the same problem asthe UK did in the 80’s, which was basically “no more fish here anymore”
I think this is more sustainable than what other industries are doing. Take China for example. The issue with elephant and rhinos being poached is being done with fish. They have tens of thousands of ships globally dredging the bottom of the seas turning off their transponders and collecting EVERYTHING decimating endangered coral and wildlife. This has been going on for decades and they are doing a lot of illegal things. Check this video out of what they are doing. This is probably the worst thing to sea wildlife. https://youtu.be/C9t5MC7WXNg
I suppose most people realise that norwegian salmon farms are destroying the fjords, are a danger to wild salmon, are unhealthy due to pesticides, and are in part responsible for amazon deforestation (soy as feed)
The bigger issue is the win of marketing of norwegian salmon in other countries: friends and family that visit from the continent are mostly thinking that it is a clean, healthy and natural product
I would say the general public view of salmon farms in Norway is very region dependent, with a higher degree of tolerance in the rural areas along the west coast where the industry provide jobs and generate value, and more resistance in the urban areas. In the city I live in, a truck drives around selling fish, and when asked if the salmon is farmed, they always say “no it’s wild!”, like that’s a good thing. This, to me at least is ridiculous. A wild salmon will travel thousands of kilometers in it’s lifetime, and eat all manner of prey on most trophic levels. While the dry pellets consumed by the farmed salmon are no longer optimal in terms of their marine content (to meet sustainability demands), they are way closer to the mark for human consumption than anything you pull out of the sea today.
The farms don’t really benefit from their proximity to land in the sense that you can see and hear them, as opposed to an oil rig. People from the cities, whose interaction with the farms mostly come from leisure activities like going to the cabin or sports fishing, are more prone to criticize the farms as unwelcome change when they pop up. It’s usually these people you’ll hear shout that it all should be *put on land*! For the past ten years, more than 1 million tons of salmon has been produced per year, so the cost and scale of putting even a meaningful portion of that on land would be insane. “Not in my neighborhood” would also get a new ring to it then, I should think.
The industry both should, and do try to improve. But due to the massive profits it often comes off as *too little* and *too late*.