_Fishy Business - The Scottish salmon industry_s hidden appetite for wild fish and land (Feedback)_
This report contains an executive summary. As requested, it is reproduced here exactly.
Executive Summary
What we feed to the animals we eat is a question at the heart of the current and future sustainability of the global food system. The climate, ecosystem and biodiversity impacts of the mass production of animal feeds such as soya and maize has been widely explored by researchers and civil society. But within the growing industry of aquaculture, or farmed fish, lies a parallel challenge, one intimately related to the future of our ocean ecosystems and food security.
Farming fish requires feed: for the globally booming industry of farmed Atlantic salmon, this means feed containing wild-caught oceanic fish sourced from European, South American and West African waters, alongside other ingredients such as soya and vegetable oils. Previously an expensive treat, salmon is now ubiquitous in UK supermarkets and food service, a phenomenon driven by the exponential expansion of supply in farmed salmon, and parallel promotion of the product to consumers as a healthy and responsibly-produced source of protein.
A crucial corner of the global salmon aquaculture industry is found in the North West Scottish Highlands, where salmon farming has grown from a relatively small industry in the 1970s to be the UK's largest food export. The Scottish farmed salmon industry presents itself as an environmental, nutritional and national success story, despite being largely foreign-owned. But while trading heavily on its Scottish provenance, the industry faces controversy from a variety of angles: its impact on the Scottish waters surrounding fish farms, on farmed salmon welfare - with mortality rates running at around 20% - on Scottish wild salmon stocks which have seen a steep decline in the past decade, and on the wild fish which provides the cornerstone feed input for the industry. Despite ongoing challenges, having grown by over 90% between 1997 and 2017, the industry plans to expand by a further 100-165% by 2030 from a 2018 baseline. Indeed, this expansion is already underway, with 'supersized' salmon farms located in deep water locations given the go ahead by the Scottish regulator SEPA in June 2019.
In this report Feedback addresses the global sustainability equation, starting from a calculation of the implications of the industry's growth ambitions for its use of wild fish and land-based ingredients. We find that to fuel its expansion and without significant change in the reliance on marine ingredients, the Scottish industry will need to increase its use of wild fish from around 460,000 tonnes a year, to 770,000 tonnes a year. For context, the current quantity of wild fish fed to farmed Scottish salmon is roughly equivalent to the amount purchased by the entire UK population, and to fulfil growth ambitions this amount would need to increase by approximately two thirds. In addition, the industry relies on other land-based feed ingredients, such as soya and palm oil, which present widely-documented sustainability challenges in themselves.
Where and how this wild fish will be sustainably sourced is an unanswered question. While some progress on certification and use of by-products has been made, transparency is lacking to independently verify the industry's claims and to ensure that pressure on wild fish stocks will not negatively impact delicate ocean ecosystems, or human food security in the places where the wild fish is caught.
We call for greater transparency from the industry on feed sourcing, including which types of fish are used, where they are sourced and to provide conclusive and independently verifiable answers to a central question hanging over the industry: what role should farmed salmon play within globally sustainable diets? And if there is a place for large-scale salmon aquaculture, is the industry willing to commit to the transparency and accountability which would justify its role?