Salmon virus indicts chiles fishing

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. 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. Once considered a seasonal delicacy, salmon is now one of the most widely available superfoods on the market. The fatty fish is rich in omega-3 fats , selenium and several B vitamins. It has also been attributed to lowering the risk of illnesses and conditions such as heart attacks and strokes.

Store-bought salmon is either wild-caught or farm-raised. The company suggests avoiding farmed Atlantic salmon from Chile. One of the biggest concerns of salmon farming in Chile is the high levels of antibiotics and pesticides used to fight diseases and parasites in the net pens.

In , the industry used 1. The government have been supporting the industry in this terrible time, now tax payers are complaining that they have to pay the bill. The American press have been instrumental in media hype and alarm, with headlines like "Salmon virus indicts Chiles fishing farms for being dirty" in the New York Times on March 27 Looking at their own beef recalls and the problems in South Korea. Meanwhile Chile has to struggle on, closing farms and leaving them fallow at great cost to communities and the economy.

Please contact the news editor Daniel Wild by emailing daniel.