Aussie salmon-farmer, Petuna, has fired 22 senior staff out of its 286 workforce after a recent review of operations appeared to find blame for recent mass-mortality events, writes The Advocate.
Petuna said it was compelled to “make redundant a number of supervisor and management roles within the company”.
The company will also make a number of full-time positions part-time, the paper wrote, adding that some of those let go had a decade of company service behind them.
“The decision is mainly due to expected lower production from Macquarie Harbour, which is a result of one-off losses from POMV (Pilchard Orthomyxovirus) and lower stocking levels,” Petuna chief financial officer, David Wood, was quoted as saying, adding the regulators and the company now had more manageable fish numbers in Macquarie Harbour.
Last year, the paper reported Petuna had culled about 100,000 mostly juvenile fish at its area fish farms in Tazmania, as it reacted to stem POMV, a disease spread by wild fish that kills local salmon in their thousands. It poses no threat to humans.
All three of Tasmania’s salmon companies farm in Macquarie Harbour and, ABC News writes, all had POMV-hit pens last summer. Now, as in Scotland and Norway, calls are being heard to release fish-mortality figures that some say might have reached a million.
