In Oeygarden near the western Norwegian town of Bergen, the Blom family’s fish farm consists of a building constructed on the water and three submerged basins where the fish are raised. This is one of the 800 fish farms blooming in the coastline in the Scandinavian country, where three times more salmon and trout are produced than meat.
It is said that farmed fish that escape, rampant illnesses and a debate over feed have tarnished the reputation of a sector whose exports totalled 2.5 billion euros (3.5 billion dollars) in Norway last year. Geir Lasse Taranger, research program manager at Bergen’s Institute of Marine Research, explained that in some areas the problems are so big that we cannot certify that it is environmentally sustainable. We should chill down the growth and make sure that all the main problems are under control.
Fish farms are very prone to disease. It is said that in Chile, the second-biggest producer of farmed salmon after Norway, a virus that emerged earlier this year devastated stocks and halved production, putting 20,000 people out of work, according to the international environmental group Pure Salmon Campaign. The problems are not limited to the fish farms. Many of the farmed fish escape from their cages and contaminate the wild salmon, thereby weakening the stocks’ genetic makeup.
It is told that a film accused Norwegian fish farms of emptying the oceans. In order to produce one kilogramme (2.2 pounds) of farmed fish, the equivalent of 2.5 kilogrammes of wild fish in meal and oil are needed. Norway’s farms, which produced just over 800,000 tonnes of fish last year, consumed 2.0 million tonnes of wild fish. But professionals say their practices are among the best in the food industry.
