The Chilean Salmon Council, a guild made up of AquaChile, Australis, Cermaq, Mowi and Salmones Aysén, is urging caution over a Greenpeace-funded documentary that it says contains falsehoods.
It debunked several claims the documentary, titled: “No Here Here”, made against Chile’s farmed salmon industry.
“Salmon farming does not extract resources, it sows, cultivates and harvests them. The concessions in which aquaculture is carried out are established in specific places determined by the authority. Companies do not ‘abandon’ their centers; there are periods of sanitary rest that force them to suspend operations for a few months,” the council said in rebuttal of just a few of the false claims.
The council, which together represent more than half of Chile’s salmon production, also corrected the feed conversion ratio that the documentary mistakenly stated as “two to three kilos of other fish to feed (produce) 1 kilo of salmon.”
“This is false. Salmon have a feed conversion ratio of 1.2:1; that is, it takes 1.2 kilos of feed to make 1 kilo of salmon, a far cry from the 6.9:1 for livestock,” the council said.
The council invited the NGO to a “fruitful dialogue” so that it has “accurate and precise information that allows reporting and showing the reality, with balance and without bias.”
It also hopes the group takes into account the significant progress that Chilean salmon farming has had in recent decades in terms of sustainability.
“In Chile, salmon farming has been developed in the last 40 years and currently has high standards, required by Chilean regulations and destination markets, equivalent to European countries and very different from those of 20 years ago,” it said.
