When you think of wild salmon you may picture these magnificent creatures, known for their awe-inspiring migration, travelling thousands of miles from their birthplace rivers to the ocean and back to spawn. On this return journey, they navigate daunting obstacles, their tails propelling them skyward, as they leap upstream. This migration is woven into the very essence of the salmon.
Now imagine a floating net filled to the brim with thousands of salmon, the water muddied with their excrement. The boundaries of this sea cage frustrate the salmon’s instinctual urge to migrate; this is where they will be trapped for their whole lives. It’s a floating factory farm with netting for boundaries instead of solid walls and this is the reality of aquaculture in New Zealand.
The reality is that this Government is passing legislation under urgency that will grant this industry license to continue to cause this suffering for decades to come.
We may find it more challenging to understand and empathise with these aquatic animals but, just like pigs and chickens in land-based factory farms, farmed salmon unquestionably are suffering.
The current Government seems hell-bent on siding with industry to cause harm to farmed animals. The most recent example is the Resource Management (Extended Duration of Coastal Permits for Marine Farms) Amendment Bill which, if passed, will give a blanket extension for all fish farm permits to be renewed for 20 years. It would allow these farms to continue operations unchecked for decades.
Animal welfare and environmental advocates had only ten days to write submissions on this Bill, but because of the damaging effects of fish farming on both animal welfare and our precious environment, we quickly mobilised to oppose this undemocratic piece of legislation.
As an organisation, we are opposed to the farming of fishes* on animal welfare grounds, though we also push for improvements in farming practices while these industries exist. Our submission expressed our strong opposition to the proposed Bill; it should be rejected in its entirety in favour of the current permit consent process.
Each animal farmed in New Zealand aquaculture is an individual who should be considered for the life they experience in fish factory farms. The Animal Welfare Act acknowledges fishes as sentient; that is, individual animals who are capable of experiencing both positive and negative affective states, who have emotions, and are deserving of recognition of their interests in their own right.
The aquaculture industry refers to these sentient animals as ‘biomass’ and measures fishes in tonnes, rather than individuals; an approach that shows how little they care for the suffering inherent in fish farming practises. And this is an industry that the Government has pledged to remove barriers to the growth of aquaculture.
Anyone who cares about giving animals a life worth living should avoid eating farm-reared salmon and object to all fish farming.
For a naturally solitary species to be confined with so many other individuals causes severe stress. Injuries result from fishes fighting and damage to their fins from scraping themselves on other fishes and enclosures are also commonplace. The risk of injury is exacerbated during fish handling and capture for transport and slaughter.
Up to 40% of Chinook salmon (the species farmed as King Salmon in New Zealand), experience a painful condition known as spinal curvature, a condition of undetermined cause in which the spine starts to bend causing impaired movement and pain.
The production of farmed salmon is also not healthy for our environment. The unnatural keeping of high stocking densities of both fishes and shellfish in marine farms in New Zealand carries multiple risks to the precious ocean ecosystem.
Organic pollution occurs in the form of uneaten food which accumulates under marine farm enclosures, as well as faeces from the animals themselves. This can result in the process known as eutrophication, in which the excessive organic matter disrupts the natural environment and can result in potentially toxic algal blooms, changes in water oxygen concentration, sediment changes and other adverse effects on the ecosystem.
Marine farms also carry the risk of fish escape, resulting in a non-native species entering the New Zealand aquatic environment, with associated biosecurity and ecological concerns, such as predation on native species and introduction of disease.
While aquaculture is promoted as a way to provide food without further depleting wild fish populations, what is often ignored is that salmon is a carnivorous species that is fed on large quantities of fish meal and oil, which means the oceans are still fished to feed the animals on farms.
It’s time everyone started to take a more critical look at the dangers of fish farming, both to animal welfare and our environment, and shift the emphasis to plant-based food production that is truly sustainable.
Learn more about fish factory farming in Aotearoa
*The term ‘fishes’ rather than ‘fish’ is increasingly being adopted by the animal advocacy movement to recognise and emphasise the individuality of the intelligent, feeling individuals we are describing.