Report claims salmon farming costing economies, society, and the environment billions
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The short-term pursuit of profits by salmon producers is creating significant unaccounted environmental and social costs – such as growing mortality rates, damage to local ecosystems, pressure on wild fish stocks, and poor fish welfare – a new report from research organization Just Economics claims.
Commissioned by the Changing Markets Foundation – an organization that “supports NGOs to drive change” – as part of its Fishing the Feed campaign, the “Dead Loss” report calculates the cumulative costs to economies, society, and the environment resulting from the negative impacts of salmon farming at almost USD 50 billion (EUR 41.2 billion) since 2013.
£3.3bn: the ‘hidden’ cost of salmon farming in Scotland
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The Scottish salmon farming industry has incurred “hidden” costs of £3.3 billion since 2013 because of mass deaths, pollution, parasites and poor animal welfare, according to a new report.
Unplanned mortalities at fish farms are estimated to have cost £666 million, fish welfare £651m and sea lice £334m. The weight of caged salmon dying prematurely in Scotland has more than doubled since 2013 to 25,772 tonnes in 2019, the report said.
The industry, however, insisted it has “a great environmental story to tell”. Fish farming is “one of the best solutions to feeding the world’s burgeoning population,” it argued.
Salmon farming is wreaking ruin on marine ecosystems, through pollution, parasites and high fish mortality rates which are causing billions of pounds a year in damage, a new assessment of the global salmon farming industry has found. Taken together, these costs amounted to about $50bn globally from 2013 to 2019, according to a report published on Thursday. Fish mortality has more than quadrupled, from 3% in 2002 to about 13.5% in 2019, in.