What we’ve done to the salmon

2 hours ago7 min read2 comments

The last few decades have witnessed arguably the most sweeping transformation in how humans produce meat, and it has nothing to do with chickens, pigs, or cows; it has to do with fish. In 2022, humanity hit a significant and sobering milestone: seafood companies began to raise more fish on farms than they caught from the sea, farming astonishingly large numbers in tiny, cramped enclosures that function as underwater factory farms.This shift amounts to the fastest and largest animal domestication project humanity has ever undertaken. For most land animals we consume, domestication—the long process of adaptation to captive conditions—unfolded over thousands of years.In stark contrast, the rise of fish farming is a contemporary phenomenon, commercially taking off around the 1970s. By the early 2000s, humans were farming well over 200 aquatic animal species, virtually all domesticated or forced into extreme captivity within the previous century, many within just a decade.Marine biologists noted this aquatic domestication occurred roughly 100 times faster than that of land animals, and on a vastly larger scale. While some 80 billion land animals are farmed annually, an estimated 763 billion fish and crustaceans are farmed each year, a figure projected to grow rapidly.This acceleration happened even as a clear scientific consensus emerged in recent decades that fish are sentient beings capable of suffering and feeling pain, a reality that casts a long ethical shadow over the industry's breakneck expansion. To understand the profound implications of this revolution in seafood production, one must consider America’s favorite fish to eat, and one of the most difficult to farm ethically: the salmon.Salmon farming emerged largely in response to manmade problems. Over the last century, overfishing combined with industrial pollution, climate change, and heavy damming decimated wild Atlantic salmon populations, leading to their protection under the US Endangered Species Act by 2000.To alleviate pressure on these depleted wild populations, producers scaled salmon farming with substantial government support. It has proven a commercial triumph; last year, concentrated in Norway, Chile, and the UK, the industry produced 2.8 million metric tons, or around 560 million individual salmon. These fish are typically raised in land-based tanks before being transferred to ocean net pens to be fattened and slaughtered.Yet this industrial success has dramatically transformed what it means to be a salmon. In the wild, Atlantic salmon live complex lives, embarking on epic migrations of over a thousand miles from freshwater riverbeds in places like Maine to the Labrador Sea near Greenland, following scents and the earth's magnetic field to return home and spawn.On farms, they are reduced to swimming in endless, monotonous circles in crowded pens, subsisting on manufactured pellets. According to Becca Franks, an assistant professor of environmental studies at New York University, salmon farming creates grave welfare problems by systematically denying the animals the ability to engage in essential natural behaviors like migrating and hunting, a deprivation she likens to farming tigers.The industry's practice of selective breeding, intended to make farmed salmon grow twice as fast as their wild counterparts, has spawned serious health issues including heart problems, spinal deformities, high rates of deafness, and increased aggression. To further accelerate growth, farms often employ 24-hour lighting, which can damage the fish's retinas.In a perverse twist, this domestication now threatens the very wild populations it was meant to protect. Since the 1970s, tens of millions of farmed salmon have escaped, competing with wild salmon for resources and interbreeding with them, leading to genetic pollution and hybrid offspring with lower survival rates.The reality within these farms can be starkly cruel. Undercover investigations, such as one conducted at a Cooke Aquaculture hatchery in Maine, documented workers culling diseased fish by beating them against tank sides, fish left to suffocate in buckets, and widespread deformities and fungal infections.Crowding hundreds of thousands of salmon in open net pens also creates a breeding ground for sea lice, painful parasites that feed on the salmon's skin. In 2023, nearly 17 percent of Norwegian farmed salmon died before slaughter, largely from infectious diseases and injuries.To combat lice, farmers have historically dumped chemicals and antibiotics into the water, polluting marine ecosystems. As lice developed resistance, the industry turned to alternative methods like subjecting salmon to high heat, which can cause further pain and injury.This phenomenon is part of what Franks terms captive dewilding—the process of modifying animals to conform to captivity—and environmental dewilding, the modification and pollution of natural water bodies. The ethical quandary extends far beyond salmon.Research from Fair Fish, which compares the natural behaviors of nearly 100 farmed fish species with their captive conditions, suggests that only two—tilapia and carp—have the potential to be farmed in somewhat decent conditions, though they often are not. Salmon rank poorly, meaning it is exceptionally difficult for farms to meet their basic welfare needs.This research highlights how little attention has been paid to the lived experience of the fish we farm, flattening an incredibly diverse group of species into a mere commodity. With aquaculture as the world's fastest-growing agricultural sector, some experts, including Franks, argue for a fundamental rethink.She suggests halting the farming of any new fish or crustacean species and transitioning existing operations towards seaweeds and bivalves like scallops and mussels, which present far fewer welfare and environmental concerns. When the global fish farming boom began, it was heralded as a way to boost the global food supply without further plundering the oceans, often with a lower carbon footprint than land animal farming.But few asked what it would mean to rapidly domesticate, confine, and slaughter hundreds of billions of sentient animals annually. As consumers, the first step toward a more ethical relationship with our oceans is to think critically about the journey of the salmon on our plates.

#salmon farming

#animal welfare

#aquaculture

#fish domestication

#environmental impact

#lead focus news

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