DE BODEMVERENIGING - EEN ZEER VISSIGE ZALMHANDEL
07.11.2024
⬆️ The Soil Association is blind to the plight of caged salmon. Caged salmon regularly die in cramped cages filled with sea lice, pesticides and faeces.
Today, in Bristol, we revisited the Bodemvereniging to remind them to stop certifying salmon farms as organic (because it’s not).
The visit coincided with their online AGM meeting. We hope it helped remind them of their duty to the environment. To help nudge them further our salmon headed friends delivered a letter stating why we came.
Het lot van de oceaan hangt van ons allemaal af.
Onze interventies zijn afhankelijk van uw steun.
⬆️ Our salmon heads prepare the letter before delivering it to the Soil Association. No need for a stamp, our letter was fin delivered.
⬇️ The letter, addressed to the Chief Executive and CEO, spells out the harms of salmon farming.
⬇️ And if you want to know more about the many problems with salmon farming watch the film below.
After delivering the letter the two angry salmon ambassadors pasted posters to the windows of the Soil Association and posed for press. We hope the message gets across to the numerous supermarkets like Tesco, Waitrose and M&S who stock ‘organic’ salmon. By supporting certification schemes like the Soil Association’s ‘Organic’ label or similar schemes by the RSPCA, Raad voor Aquacultuurbeheer (ASC) en de Marine Stewardship Council these retailers are lying to their customers. The quotes below show just how much these schemes are a lie:
“A total of 14 seawater salmon farms in Scotland are currently Organic certified – seven Mowi Scotland farms, five farms run by Cooke Aquaculture, and two farms run by Organic Sea Harvest Ltd”(Wildfish, 2023). All part of the misguided introduction of the Soil Association’s ‘organic’ salmon scheme in 2006, a former chair of its standards committee said “salmon farming in cages has nothing at all to do with organic principles.” ‘Contrary to the Soil Association’s promise to “ensure the highest possible standards of animal welfare”, organic certification is also no guarantee of low levels of suffering or mortality. Organic Sea Harvest’s Culnacnoc farm suffered a serious mortality event at the end of 2022, losing more than half a million (520,638) farmed salmon over a 6-week period. Suffering from amultitude of conditions (parasitic, viral, and environmental damage) causing severe gill disease, as many as 325,000 fish died in a single week. Those fish that survived remained certified as organic by the Soil Association’ (Wildfish, 2023).
Salmon farming is beset by problems. Its sourcing of fish and soya to feed farmed salmon has been described as neo-colonialism, destroying the food security of hungry people in poorer countries and destroying the rainforests where soya is grown. Salmon faeces, diseases, parasites, pesticides and medications are poured into the Scottish marine environment like there is no tomorrow, destroying the ecosystems on which fragile coastal communities depend for their livelihoods. Massive quantities of microplastics are vented into the sea when the caged salmon bite plastic feeding tubes. And the horrific cruelty of salmon farming turns the salmon into barely living zombie-like beings, riddled with injuries and disease, crawling with sea lice, swimming in circles in overcrowded pens awaiting their shipment to Britain’s supermarkets (if they don’t die before and get buried as landfill) has been exposed by activists and whistleblowers and regularly causes food scares and welfare outrage in the media.
⬆️ Ding dong salmon calling. Our salmon heads deliver the letter to the Soil Assocation’s HQ in Bristol.
Despite their claims of ‘delivering the highest levels of animal welfare, protecting human and animal health, safeguarding the environment and protecting the interests of organic consumers,’(Soil Association organic aquaculture standards 2024) the Soil Association helps the Scottish Salmon industry by hiding the horrific welfare abuses suffered by millions of farmed salmon behind its certified labelling. And the toxic soup the salmon industry forces salmon to swim in is anything but ‘organic’.
Read this response by the Soil Association to one of our recent instagram posts:
We think the Soil Association needs to stop certifying salmon farms and remove the certifications they’ve already given out. That’s the only way they can insure they’re not lying to consumers. After all a fish which is fed antibiotics and swims in pesticides can’t be described as ‘organic’, can it?
⬆️ Salmon meet salmon.
⬇️ Chips only please.
A very fishy recipe indeed. Download our fish recipe card and distribute it at your local supermarket.
All photos by Simon Holliday.