The future of organic salmon is hanging in the balance as the Soil Association (SA) considers closing its certification of farms for the fish.
“This is make or break time,” Soil Association standards director Sarah Compson told Wicked Leeks as she announced the conclusion of an 18-month review looking at welfare and environmental problems facing salmon farms across the entire Scottish salmon farming industry.
The review found that despite having the strictest standards in the sector – which have driven positive change on non-organic sites too – they are not going far enough to tackle the welfare and environmental risks on organic sites. In fact, the risks are “unacceptable”.
“More needs to be done to respond to the risks of critical issues including fish suffering amid sea lice outbreaks, mass mortality events, and the release of harmful chemicals into the environment,” the certification body explained in its review findings. “These problems are more pronounced in conventional systems, but they are still unacceptable on Soil Associated certified farms.”
A key role that the Soil Association plays as a standard setter is to lead by example and test what the best can be for the environment and farmed animal welfare – and salmon is testing the organisation to its limits.
“[…] it is possible to give organic farmed salmon a good life while getting the sector onto a more sustainable footing,” Compson explained, but “more needs to be urgently done” to achieve that.
Changing fish farming fast
The Soil Association has outlined a path to achieve the progress needed, including a tougher stance on mass mortality with work to prevent them and, if they do occur, suspension and a full site suitability reassessment after two events.
The SA has also said that salmon farming cannot be sustainable in the long term while it depends on deltamethrin, a persistent chemical used as a vet treatment. A phase out is therefore being proposed (use is already a third of that on non-organic salmon farms).
There will also be a new suite of welfare checks in addition to the daily checks already carried out. So-called Welfare Outcome Assessments (WOAs) are already required for other, land-based farming sectors, and the impact on production costs isn’t yet clear. “However, we would hope that even if certification fees rise, the improved welfare should result in reduced costs for the producer in other areas such as veterinary treatments and mortalities,” said Compson.
Currently, organic salmon is around double the price of its conventionally-reared cousin in major supermarkets. Organic certification also requires clear labelling that the fish has been farmed. As Steph Wetherell explained in her latest ‘sustainable food series’ piece last week: “When you pick up a pack of Scottish salmon in a supermarket or fishmonger, most people don’t realise that the fish they are buying is farmed. While it is possible to buy wild salmon caught elsewhere in the world, all salmon from within the UK is farmed (and there is no longer a requirement for it to be labelled as such),” she added.
Under wider labelling rules there needs to be an indication that the salmon was ‘farm-raised’ but this can be hidden away on the back. Restaurants have no need to mention it at all.
Leap of faith
There is certainly no chance of the noise around salmon farming dying down. “[This] has to be one of the most controversial topics in UK food and farming right now,” Compson suggested in a blog in March.
Indeed, the Soil Association’s warning came as the UK struck a trade deal with India that will see the 33% tariff on salmon slashed to 0% within five years. Scottish salmon is the UK’s largest food export, farmed in five key areas across the west coast and northern isles. It is now sent to more than 50 countries and exports increased 45% to £844 million last year (which is £2.3 million every single day). Sales in the UK leapt 5.5% in the 12 months to December, accounting for nearly a third of all fish sales in the UK.
Salmon Scotland, which represents many producers, has said ‘red tape’ is preventing further expansion, however campaigners say the sector is spiralling out of control. Some have called for a moratorium until there is progress in reducing environmental impact and improving governance.
Among the Soil Association’s proposals are stricter rules around where salmon farms can be located, particularly to reduce the risk they may pose to the globally important wild salmon runs and maerl seaweed habitats in Scottish waters. Organic certified salmon producers would also no longer be permitted to use whole fish from certified sustainable fisheries and instead only able to use sustainably sourced waste and trimmings to feed salmon in marine sites.
Although its is proposing significant changes, Compson reassured shoppers that for organic salmon products, strict standards remain in place. “These ensure organic fish have more space and are protected from stress, with restrictions on vet treatments and sustainable feed requirements to ensure a proactive approach to animal welfare and environmental impacts,” she explained. “Organic salmon is only a small percentage of the Scottish farmed salmon industry but shoppers can clearly distinguish between the two due to the organic logo on pack,” she added.
Organic is indeed a small fish in a much larger conventional pond. Soil Association Certification currently certifies 16 marine salmon sites, four freshwater sites and four hatcheries (not including sites in the application process). There are 211 active salmon sites in Scotland and Scottish waters, so organic sites represent only around 10% by number.
If organic is to survive it will need support from the rest of the industry, as well as the government. “Our proposals require some dramatic changes and commitments made not just by organic salmon farms but the entire industry,” the Association said. “While most of the goals that we are seeking to achieve in the next year are based around developing our own standards, we need to be confident that the industry will join us on this journey and at the pace we are seeking.”
As Compson warned: this is make or break time in more ways than one.
Read Steph Wetherell’s feature on salmon, as part of The Sustainable Food Series.
Read more features within the Sustainable Food Series.
I am not at all surprised that Soil Association is considering withdrawing its certification of these factory farms. There was much concern around this 20 years ago when they established the aquaculture standards. Its taken then all this time to realise that it was never going to work. Below is a reply to a letter that I wrote in response to a letter I wrote to the Soil Association in 2006:
I am grateful for your interest over my concerns with organic salmon; I am not alone in this as I am sure you are aware. There is a flowing tide of similar like individuals and I am I hope, speaking on behalf of those that prefer to keep there concerns largely to themselves, it is not everybody who is able to freely express their reservations.
I have thoroughly read them through and thought long and hard about this issue for a considerable time. Thank you for sending me the information, I have studied it and given it a great deal of thought but I have to conclude that my fears and reservations are as strong as ever and I am afraid you have done nothing to allay my fears. My real concerns are as follows, not necessarily in order of importance; I have found it impossible to grade them each is as important as the other.
• I get the impression that some of the thinking that went into the decision to develop the aquaculture standards is based on the fact that farmed fish is becoming a major food source. This I have little problem with, I consider fish a valuable addition to some peoples diets, especially those far from marine sources who can develop lake and river management of appropriate species.
But also part of the decision seems to have been based on the fact that in the western world there is a general feeling that the sea has become so polluted and the fish stocks so over exploited that the only real alternative is to transfer what nature has in the past done so well, before we screwed it up, to a system of highly managed land based culture. So the Soil Association seems to have turned its back on the oceans, but then it is not going to be easy certifying wild fish. It’s like saying we have messed up this Earth, let’s go and find another one somewhere else. The huge sum of money that has been utilised in these standards could have been put to better use trying to preserve and maintain the eco-system in the sea. I have wondered for many decades now why it is that the Soil Association seems to have so little interaction with environmental groups.
• I have always believed that organic systems are dependant on a systems based approach, that all components are inter-dependant on each other. This is something I always teach in any seminar that I run, and the delegates love it, as it gives a structure to what they do in their own farm systems. It is a very basic and fundamental philosophy of the organic world. This aquaculture standard is completely devoid of any system at all, I have been trying desperately to find just a glimmer of a system in it, but to no avail, it just does not exist. The fact that pest and disease is a significant problem in salmon stocks is a clear message that nature is giving out that something is clearly wrong with the system-there is none.
• To the issue of salmon feeding, there is a complete and total dependence on 100% brought in feed, none of which is even remotely organic. Relying on waste products from human food fishing doesn’t look to me it to come from any sort of system. What will happen when there is not enough of this waste to feed the caged salmon? Surely to rely on such a source will only encourage even more pressure on what little is left in the sea? It is like the scenario with burning wastes to produce energy.
I am even more alarmed by the proposal to develop land based food systems especially that using OSRape. Firstly salmon do not eat vegetable oils and to force them to is yet another example of denying them the “opportunities of life that accord with their physiology, natural behaviour and well being”
Secondly the growing of OSR is fraught with agronomic problems, which is why so little is grown organically. It has a very appropriate name as rape is what is does of the land, it is very nutrient demanding, sucumbs to a whole range of pests many of which are transferred to vegetable crops in the area. Our biggest and just about our only pest problem now is pigeons, whose numbers have grown dramatically over the past few decades, due to the proliferation of OSR on conventional farms. As a crop it offers little in the way of bio-diversity and its processing is fuel hungry. It needs a long rotation due to the potential for clubroot and when you look at the area of brassacas grown in this country we already have 40% of vegetable land growing them conventionally. It can be grown organically but in very limited quantities and it is unlikely to be ever more than a minority crop.
The whole issue of land management in this country needs a hard re-think, we simply do not have enough to feed ourselves as it is, even if everybody was to adopt a vegetarion or very meat reduced diet we are short of land. Developing yet more land-hungry livestock units is simply unsustainable, there is not enough decent land in the UK to do it.