Some of those antibiotics, they say, are prohibited for use on animals in the United States. Many of those salmon still end up in American grocery stores, where about 29 percent of Chilean exports are destined. While fish from China have come under special scrutiny in recent months, here in Chile regulators have yet to form a registry that even tracks the use of the drugs, researchers said.
The new virus is spreading, but it has primarily affected the fish of Marine Harvest, a Norwegian company that is the world's biggest producer of farm-raised salmon and exports about 20 percent of the salmon that come from Chile.
Salmon produced in Chile by Marine Harvest are sold in Costco and Safeway stores, among other major grocery retailers, said Torben Petersen, the managing director of Marine Harvest here. Arne Hjeltnes, the main spokesman in Oslo for Marine Harvest, said that his company recognized that antibiotic use was too high in Chile and that fish pens too close together had contributed to the problems.
He said Marine Harvest welcomed tougher environmental regulations. Hjeltnes said. On a recent visit to the port of Castro, about miles south of Puerto Montt, a warehouse contained hundreds of bags, some weighing as much as 2, pounds, filled with salmon food and medication.
The bags - many of which were labeled "Marine Harvest" and "medicated food" for the fish - contained antibiotics and pigment as well as hormones to make the fish grow faster, said Adolfo Flores, the port director. Environmentalists say the salmon are being farmed for export at the expense of almost everything else around. The equivalent of 7 to 11 pounds of fresh fish are required to produce 2 pounds of farmed salmon, according to estimates. Salmon feces and food pellets are stripping the water of oxygen, killing other marine life and spreading disease, biologists and environmentalists say.
Escaped salmon are eating other fish species and have begun invading rivers and lakes as far away as neighboring Argentina, researchers say. It is simply not possible to produce fish on an industrial scale in a sustainable way," said Wolfram Heise, director of the marine conservation program at the Pumalin Project, a private conservation initiative in Chile. Fish at a Puerto Montt market.
The industry is moving to cleaner waters, leaving local people fearful for the future. When companies began breeding non-native Atlantic salmon here some two decades ago, salmon farming was seen as a godsend for this sparsely populated area of sleepy fishing towns and campgrounds.
The industry has grown eightfold since Today it employs 53, people either directly or indirectly. Marine Harvest runs the world's largest "closed system" fish-farming operation at Rio Blanco, near Puerto Montt, where 35 million fish a year are raised until they weigh about a third of an ounce.
As the industry abandons the Lakes region in search of uncontaminated waters elsewhere, local residents are angry and worried about their future. Since discovering the virus in Chile last July, Marine Harvest has closed 14 of its 60 centers and announced it would lay off 1, workers, or one-quarter of its Chilean operation.
Industry officials say Chile is suffering growing pains similar to salmon farming operations in Norway, Scotland and the Faroe Islands, where a different form of the I.
Norway, the world's leading salmon producer, eventually decided to spread salmon farms farther apart, reducing stress on the fish, and responded to criticism of high antibiotic use with stronger regulations and the development of vaccines. Researchers in Chile say the problems of salmon farming go well beyond the latest virus. Their concerns mirror those of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, which heavily criticized Chile's farm-fishing industry in a report. The O.
It also said Chile's use of antibiotics was "excessive. Officials at Sernapesca, Chile's national fish agency, declined repeated requests for interviews for this article and did not respond to written questions submitted more than a week ago. But Cesar Barros, the president of SalmonChile, an industry association, said, "We are working with the government to improve the situation. He dismissed the broader criticism of sanitary conditions, saying there was no scientific evidence to support the claims.
But researchers charge that the industry has been reluctant to pay for scientific studies, which Chile sorely needs. The salmon farmed in Chile is generally Atlantic salmon, which is not native to the Southern hemisphere and has only recently been farmed in Chile, beginning with Fundacisn Chile in the late eighties.
Chile is a prime environment for salmon farming, with numerous inlets and fjords offering pristine waters and protection from rough ocean currents for salmon pens. Chilean salmon pens in the Gulf of Reloncavi. The New York Times. Chilean farmed salmon are first hatched in freshwater hatcheries and then matured in open cages, which are metal on the surface with a netted bottom.
Each farm holds 1 million to 1. After being harvested, the salmon are sold mostly abroad. Several American companies, including Walmart and Costco, have stopped buying Chilean salmon due to concerns over consumer health and environmental damage. Although no dangers to human health have been proved as of , Costco was concerned by the excessive antibiotic use in Chilean farms to prevent a bacteria outbreak.
The bacteria, Piscirickettsiosis, or SRS, causes lesions, hemorrhaging, and kidney and spleen swelling, and many salmon farms across the world have been infected.
Another paragraph ignored was one which said that "this piece has been written in a manner to harm a relatively new and successful industry which has become the world's second exporter of salmon and trout". The original ambassador's letter had seven paragraphs and was addressed to the editor of the NYT, according to the Santiago media.
I agree with American officials and Chilean executives when they reject the notion that Chilean salmon industry practices are unsafe and reaffirm that the virus called infectious salmon anemia is not harmful to humans. To give further assurances to American consumers, it is important to remember that the Food and Drug Administration said that in none of the salmon samples tested positive to any of the chemicals or drugs mentioned in the article.
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