Tasmania's Salmon Industry: Sustainable Feast or Environmental Threat?

Tasmania’s $1 billion salmon industry will supply thousands of Australian households this Christmas, its fresh and smoked fish fillets a relatively cheap alternative to many seafood options.Tasmania’s big three salmon producers – foreign-owned companies Huon, Tassal and Petuna – promote the industry as sustainable, with low environmental impacts. But the industry’s critics warn it is poorly regulated, environmentally harmful and expanding at an unsustainable pace.

Seafood shoppers face a difficult task in deciding who to trust, especially with political leaders gearing up for an election stoush over the future of the industry.Salmon farms have been blamed for environmental degradation around the Tasmanian coastline, antibiotics leaking into the food chain, algal blooms, dead seals and introduction of hundreds of thousands of escapee fish into the environment. However, Salmon Tasmania chief executive Luke Martin, who heads the peak body for the industry, said the farms were a good fit for the Tasmanian environment. “We know millions of Australians will have salmon on the menu this Christmas lunch, and by doing so, they are supporting the livelihoods of 5000 Australians living across regional Tasmanian communities,” Martin said. “Salmon is also a responsibly sourced seafood farmed under the highest environmental regulatory conditions of any farmed protein in Australia.A salmon farm in Tasmania.Salmon Tasmania’s website states the regulations strike a balance between growing a vital protein source, which is produced with minimal environmental impacts due to careful management. The industry states its physical footprint on the water is 4000 hectares, compared to 426 million for agriculture on land.However, environmental groups paint a different picture.“The industry puts into the sea more pollutants than all of Tasmania’s sewage outfalls combined,” said Australian Marine Conservation Society sustainable seafood program manager Adrian Mede

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