Chilean Salmon Boycot Began Monday

Fed up with what they claim to be environmentally destructive practices by the country’s $2.2 billion farmed salmon industry, a group of local fishermen in far southern Chile’s Region 11 have launched an international boycott of Chilean farmed salmon.

The Association of Aysen Artisan Fisher Organizations (AGO) began its boycott Monday, and is calling on support from environmental organizations both in Chile and abroad. The rapid growth of Chile’s farmed salmon industry, the AGO says, “is the worst environmental and social tragedy to have ever occurred in Region 10.”

Roughly 70 percent of all Chilean farmed salmon production takes place in Region 10, where the once booming industry is a cornerstone of the local economy. While salmon companies have brought jobs to the region, they have introduced numerous environmental problems, the industry’s many critics claim.

After posting huge and sustained production increases for many years, Chile’s salmon industry has slowed of late, due in large part to an outbreak of infectious salmon anemia (ISA) that over the past 12 months has spread throughout the country’s southernmost regions.

Read more in the Patagonia Times.