Tag Archives: insecticides and fungicides

A history of toxic chemicals in the fish farming industry

When fish farms first appeared on the coast in the late 1970s, they seemed like an interesting idea. They could provide food, meet consumer demand, and ­perhaps ­alleviate the stress on wild stocks.,, Atlantic salmon and Norwegian owners became the new face of fish farms. The salmon are densely packed into the net pens, moving among their own faeces, fish pellets, and chemicals that are regularly dumped into the pens to deter the prevalent bacteria and sea lice that these conditions give rise to.,,  “Many of the pesticides, insecticides and fungicides used by salmon farmers are derived from the Second World War’s chemical weapons programs,” writes Don Staniford in A Stain upon the Sea. These chemicals, used internationally, have poisoned the land via ­commercial agriculture, but were never intended to be dumped into the sea via aquaculture. >click to read< 09’10