Protect Our Oceans from Unsustainable Fish Farms

Why is this important?

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is an agency of the United Nations whose goal is achieving food security for all. For some time, the FAO has been calling for an aggressive increase in farmed fish (“aquaculture”) and promoting a so called “blue agenda.” Its goal is to increase what it calls “sustainable aquaculture” by 75% by 2040. However, “sustainable aquaculture” is an ambiguous term, and the FAO’s own research acknowledges that the production of aquatic foods is not without serious problems, including overfishing, habitat degradation and unequal access to resources and markets.

Some aquaculture can be sustainable, such as the farming of kelp and other aquatic plants, as well as the cultivation of a wide range of bivalve creatures like mussels, clams and oysters in small-scale operations. However, it is not the case of farming  carnivorous  fish like  salmon, sea bass, and sea bream. These species require being fed fish meal and oil from massive quantities of wild fish (more than the farms produce!) and are the most commonly farmed fish in the EU. 

In 2021, Argentina became the first country to ban intensive salmon farming in its waters. The practice is also banned on the West Coast of the US and in British Columbia, Canada as of 2029. Knowing that these countries, renowned for their fishing worldwide, have banned such a practice, it is inevitable to think that the rest of us should - and could - be following their example.

On the occasion of World Oceans Day in June 2024, we collected more than 160 organizations from around the world asking the FAO and world leaders to heed the evidence and EXCLUDE carnivorous fish farming from their definition of what constitutes sustainable aquaculture. Unfortunately, after a week of debates at the July meeting of FAO’s Committee on Fisheries, that body adopted Guidelines for Sustainable Aquaculture that still include carnivorous fish.

And so we are continuing our letter-signing campaign and asking for your support in signing on.

Why? What’s the Deal with Carnivorous Fish Farming?

There is more and more evidence coming to light on the unsustainability and environmentally damaging aspects of open net pen carnivorous fish farming and studies have linked it to the following problems:

• Despite FAO’s mantra that aquaculture is “feeding the world,” in fact high volumes of wild-caught fish are extracted from food-insecure countries to feed farmed fish. It takes between 1.2 to 6 kgs of forage fish, edible for human consumption, to produce 1 kg of farmed fish destined for wealthy consumer markets. 
• Increases in harmful algal blooms and negative impact on critical Posidonia meadows, one of the planet’s largest carbon sinks
• Mass fish die-offs
• Uncontrolled use of the carcinogen formaldehyde
• Large amounts of microplastics and debris left behind in the waters under fish farms
• Prophylactic and overuse of antibiotics

The negative impacts from industrial carnivorous fish farming will only increase as ocean temperatures continue to rise. We need concrete, enforceable international standards for the remediation of damaged environments and the expansion of genuinely sustainable aquaculture options.

We ask that the FAO stop supporting and promoting marine based open net carnivorous fish and that it revises its guidelines on sustainable aquaculture to EXCLUDE carnivorous fish farming.

Learn more at fishfarmsout.org