Activist Campaigns against Our Salmon Harm Consumers and Wild Fish Populations

For years, environmentalists have criticized offshore aquaculture, both for its potential to pollute and contaminate natural waterways, and for the risks it poses to wild fish populations. As one non-governmental organization (NGO) put it, offshore “salmon farms are a serious threat to the balance of life on the coast, and to wild salmon in particular.”

Groups like these long advocated for land-based farms as the best way to eliminate downside risks like escape, pollution, sedimentation of seabed, and disease transfer between farmed and wild salmon.

We spent the last 30 years developing safe, sustainable, and healthy land-based salmon that answers all of those challenges – and with a salmon that grows faster to market size – which makes land-based salmon farming financially viable.

You’d think these groups would be happy. And yet, a coalition of well-funded alleged “food safety” NGOs and fringe activist groups have moved the goal posts, and launched a new campaign against our product.

The attacks are rooted in unfounded fearmongering on the safety of bioengineered foods, and baseless claims about our fish somehow (they don’t specify how) making their way from our farms to open water and wild salmon populations. In nearly 30 years, we’ve never had that happen — because there are multiple, redundant bio-secure layers of protection between our inland farms and open waters. Moreover, even if our fish did make it to open waters, every egg is pressure-treated to prevent reproduction with wild salmon.

But these groups do not just oppose bioengineered salmon. In fact, they oppose all foods that have been modified using genetic engineering, a method that has been subject to extensive scientific and regulatory scrutiny to ensure its safety. See, for instance, this letter signed by over 100 Nobel Prize-winning scientists:

Scientific and regulatory agencies around the world have repeatedly and consistently found crops and foods improved through biotechnology to be as safe as, if not safer than those derived from any other method of production. There has never been a single confirmed case of a negative health outcome for humans or animals from their consumption. Their environmental impacts have been shown repeatedly to be less damaging to the environment, and a boon to global biodiversity.

In a 2016 review of more than 1,000 studies, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found that genetically engineered foods do not pose a health risk to humans. The World Health Organization, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the European Commission all reached the same conclusion.

Like other foods improved through bioengineering, our salmon is totally safe. But don’t just take our word for it. That’s based on the unprecedented period of scientific study, environmental review, and public comment that took nearly 20 years to complete. At the culmination of that exhaustive process, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) gave our product approval in 2015. Our salmon was also reviewed and approved for consumption by Health Canada in 2016.

As part of the review, the FDA environmental risk assessment concluded that our farming protocols would have no negative impact on the environment or on endangered species. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) agreed with this assessment.

Not only do our fish mitigate the environmental impacts of ocean-based aquaculture and protect wild populations, they also require less food to raise, and can be cultivated closer to their end markets, meaning fewer emissions tied to long-distance transport and distribution. That also means that the salmon that ends up at fish counters is fresher, and more affordable. And because of our carefully monitored and conveniently located operations, our salmon is always free of antibiotics.

We agree with agricultural and health scientists around the world that biotechnology is a critical tool to feeding more people more sustainably, and to diversifying and protecting our food supply from external shocks.

Our salmon, raised on land-based farms, allow us to provide a healthy and sustainable protein while taking pressure off wild populations and ocean ecospheres. Through our understanding of biology and genetics, we are helping to forge a more resilient planet, providing an innovative solution to help combat climate change, and promoting a healthier society. 

Whatever their intentions—whether malicious or simply misguided—fringe activist groups are standing athwart all this great progress. It’s our job to make sure their untruths don’t trump the facts.