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hardly inspire confidence in the sector (EC: 2000c). A forthcoming report is to investigate chemical use in Mediterranean sea cage fish farming in much more detail.
5) Feed/Food:
Intensive sea cage fish farming’s dependence upon a fast diminishing and increasingly contaminated resource – namely fish meal and fish oil – threatens to blow sea cage fish farming out of the water altogether. The fifth fundamental flaw – the unresolved and unsolvable feed/food issue - will ultimately be the final fatal flaw for sea cage fish farming. Aquaculture’s appetite for fish meal and fish oil is rapidly impacting on the capture fisheries sector (Tacon: 1994, Naylor et al: 1998, Naylor et al: 2000, Pauly et al: 2002). Over 3 tonnes of wild fish are required to produce one tonne of farmed salmon, for example (for other marine fish this rises to over 5 tonnes) (Naylor et al: 2000) leading to a net loss on marine resources and a drain on the capture sector. Salmon farming is running on empty - it is literally running out of fuel. Such is aquaculture’s insatiable growth that it already uses up ca. 70% of the world’s fish oil and ca. 35% of the world’s fish meal (Tacon and Forster: 2001, Tacon and Barg: 2001). In June 2001 the Research Council of Norway predicted that “within three to eight years” the lack of marine oil raw materials could hinder the growth of Norwegian salmon farming (Hjellestad: 2001a). A staggering 80 per cent of all fish caught by Norwegian trawlers is already used to provide feed for the fish farming industry and the International Fish Meal and Fish Oil Manufacturers Association (IFOMA) predict that aquaculture may consume 90 per cent of the world’s fish oil by 2010 (Pike and Barlow: 1999). Moreover:
“It would be a mistake to abandon the significance of fish oils as subservient to that of fish meal. There is a risk that quality fish oils could prove to be the more finite commodity in the next decade as aquaculture is projected to use 87% of world supply in 2010. This has obvious implications for the salmon sector and others where much of the dietary energy is provided as oil at present” (MacAllister and Partners: 1999, p39)
Just as oil companies are looking further afield, fishing fleets are sinking to greater depths in search of fish oil – the new ‘blue gold’. Feed companies are already harvesting sandeels, sprats, capelin, anchovies, herring, mackerel, blue whiting and even looking to exploit krill (Hjellestad: 2001b, 2002). Desperate to find an alternative fuel supply, salmon farmers have turned to vegetables, wheat, soya, seaweed and other non-fish meal and fish oil diets. Replacing fish oil in salmon diets with vegetable lipids has already lead to problems with the Japanese sending back consignments of farmed salmon as it tastes too ‘earthy’. The problem of consumer acceptability of salmon fed on vegetables is something that the EC are now investigating (EC: 2001g). The search for fish feed substitutes (Hjellestad: 2001a) is addressed in the EC’s “Strategy for the Sustainable Development of European Aquaculture”:
“The Commission considers that research to find alternative protein sources for fish feed should be given top priority, in order to allow a further development of carnivorous fish farming and, at the same time, ensure the sustainability of industrial fisheries” (EC: 2002, p12)
However, turning a carnivore into an herbivore is ultimately doomed to failure. In fact, the EC is currently sponsoring a project looking into the welfare, disease and animal health implications of feeding vegetables to salmon (EC: 2001f). On land we only farm herbivores such as cattle, pigs, sheep and chickens so why do we not apply the same principles when farming in the sea? Why not continue farming shellfish such as mussels, oysters, clams and scallops that has been practised for millennia? When all the environmental, economic and social costs are internalised, sea cage fish farming makes precious little sense at all. Sadly, common sense is not a currency those bankrolling sea cage farming are used to dealing in (Staniford: 2001).
Not only is aquaculture’s food supply fast running out but also what fish remains is contaminated with organochlorine pesticides. In the Northern hemisphere especially, the marine environment has been polluted to such an extent that the consequences are now being seen in the biomagnification of contaminants up through our food chain. EC measures designed to tackle the problem of PCB and dioxin contamination (EC: 2000a, 2000b, 2001a, 2002a, 2002b) have been met with fierce resistance by the fish feed industry whose products have been effectively labelled ‘hazardous goods’. For example, when the EC first proposed to lower the level of dioxins in fish meal and fish oil:
“The trade reacted immediately and went about lobbying various European ministries. Fishmeal producers from Peru and Chile e-mailed and faxed their embassies, the trade in Europe called for emergency meetings in Spain, Italy, Germany, UK, Iceland and Norway. Agriculture ministers from every country were bombarded with information and requests to postpone the meeting. One senior EU official was reported to have disconnected his telephone and fax line on the Friday afternoon because of the volume of information he was receiving” (Millar: 1999)
In November 2000 the EC’s Scientific Committee on Animal Nutrition stated that “fish meal and fish oil are the most heavily contaminated feed materials with products of European fish stocks more heavily contaminated than those from South Pacific stock by a factor of ca. eight” (EC: 2000a) whilst the EC’s Scientific Committee on Food stated that fish can contain ten times higher levels of dioxins than some other foodstuffs and can represent up to 63% of the average daily exposure to dioxins (EC: 2000b). In November 2001 the EC adopted new regulations on dioxins in food and feed (EC: 2001a, EC: 2002b) but failed to include PCBs “because of the scarcity of reliable data” (EC: 2000a). The Council Directive 2001/102/EC and Council Regulation (EC) 2375/2001 foresee that the maximum levels of dioxins in feed and food will be reviewed for the first time by 31 December 2004 at the latest in the light of new data on the presence of dioxins and dioxin-like PCBs, in particular with a view to the inclusion of dioxin-like PCBs in the levels to be set. A further review by 31 December 2006 at the latest will aim to significantly reducing the maximum levels (EC: 2002b, 2002c).
The repercussions for sea cage fish farmers are especially significant as they are dependent upon vast quantities of fish meal and fish oil (Millar: 2001). For example, the news that fish feed and farmed salmon was contaminated with dioxins led to Nutreco’s share price falling 15% (Intrafish: 2001). The farming of fish such as salmon so high up the food chain is an extremely efficient way of concentrating contaminants. Some fish feed is so contaminated it should be disposed of as hazardous goods rather than fed to farmed fish destined for human consumption. Yet, fish feed companies have known about PCB contamination, for example, for over 20 years (Mac: 1979). The pesticides toxaphene, DDT and chlordane have all been detected in farmed salmon and fish feed (Oetjen and Karl: 1998, PRC: 2002). Nutreco and IFOMA have both been involved in an EC-sponsored research project looking at ‘Dioxin and PCB Accumulation in Farmed Fish from Feed’ which has just been completed although when the results will be made publicly available is unclear (EC: 2002d). According to the project outline: “Contaminant levels will be determined in fillets, whole fish and in the faeces in order to measure contaminant accumulation, if any, in the edible flesh and their digestibilities” (EC: 2002d). The EC is in the process of establishing a database of 1,500 samples to compare PCB and dioxin contamination between different farmed and wild species and different countries.
Recent scientific research has revealed contamination in Canadian, Norwegian, Scottish and Irish farmed salmon (MAFF: 1999, Easton et al: 2002, FSAI: 2002, Jacobs et al: 2000, Jacobs et al: 2002a, 2002b, PRC: 2002). Dioxin contamination of fishery products is now well known with DDT, chlordane and hexachlorobenzene recently detected in 97% of ‘fresh’ (i.e. farmed) salmon on sale in the UK (the only negative sample was the one wild fresh salmon sample) (Cameron: 2002c, PRC: 2002). In 1997 all 161 samples of farmed salmon tested by the UK’s Veterinary Medicines Directorate contained PCBs (VMD: 1998). The Food Standards Agency in the UK
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