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ENVIRONMENT-CHILE: Salmon Farming under Scrutiny

Daniela Estrada

SANTIAGO, Jul 31 2006 (IPS) - Years of criticism of the environmental and labour impacts of the salmon industry in Chile prompted several local non-governmental organisations and trade unions to set up a new body to monitor the industry, on the southern island of Chiloé.

“I see this as an opportune moment to try to generate changes, because under the current conditions, the salmon industry is not sustainable,” economist Francisco Pinto, coordinator of the natural resources programme at the Terram Foundation, one of the NGOs spearheading the initiative, told IPS.

The brand-new Labour and Environmental Observatory of Chiloé began to function last Thursday on the island, which is located in the region of Los Lagos, 1,100 km south of Santiago. The region accounts for 80 percent of the salmon farmed in this South American country. The rest is produced in the neighbouring region of Aysén.

The new body was created – with the support of Oxfam International – by the Terram Foundation along with another local environmental group, El Canelo de Nos; the Centre of National Studies on Alternative Development (CENDA); and the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT) central trade union’s Labour Observatory.

The Labour and Environmental Observatory of Chiloé plans to gather and compile all available information on salmon farming in Chile. “We want to be a place that salmon industry workers can come to for assistance and advice, where they can express the labour problems they face,” said Pinto.

Salmon is not native to Chile, but was introduced with great success in the 1980s. Today it is the country’s second leading export product, after copper, and continued growth is expected.

“In economic terms, the salmon industry has made a major contribution to Chile, but its growth has been associated with environmental and labour problems,” said Pinto.

That has occurred, he said, despite a “clean production accord” signed by the industry and the government in 2002.

Salmon farms are criticised for their heavy, indiscriminate use of antibiotics and for the large amounts of fish feed and feces that end up in the waters below the offshore pens, which deplete the oxygen needed by the marine species in the surrounding ocean. These substances have also been linked to “red tide” toxic algae outbreaks.

A Terram Foundation study reported that it took 10 kg of other species of fish to produce one kg of farmed salmon.

According to Pinto, if projections for the growth of Chile’s salmon industry to a total production level of 1.2 million tons by 2013 hold true, “practically the entire fish feed industry in the southern Pacific Ocean will be dedicated to feeding farmed salmon.”

These figures differ from those provided by the Salmon Industry Association (SalmónChile), which says only 4.3 kg of other fish are needed to produce one kg of farmed salmon.

The labour risks of salmon farming have also come under scrutiny. In the last 16 months, 18 workers have died, nine of whom drowned while working in the salmon farming pens.

The situation is no better in the fish processing plants, where the employees – who are mainly women – perform repetitive movements that put them at risk of occupational health problems like tendonitis, shoulder bursitis and carpal tunnel syndrome.

Francisco Rain, president of the Federation of Salmon Workers (FETRASAL), told IPS that the workers are standing up for nearly eight hours a day, and that their bathroom breaks are actually timed. Some pregnant women have even miscarried on the job as a result of the difficult conditions.

The international environmental organisation Oceana maintains that these problems are sufficient to justify a moratorium on the growth of salmon farming in the waters off the shores of the southern Los Lagos and Aysén regions, until the necessary mechanisms are in place to monitor labour conditions and curb environmental impacts.

Pinto, meanwhile, pointed to the “transnationalisation” of the salmon industry in Chile, where 40 percent of the capital invested in salmon farms is now foreign, mainly from Norway, the Netherlands, Japan and Spain.

The foreign corporations are criticised for failing to apply the same labour and environmental standards as those followed in their home countries, taking advantage of lax Chilean legislation or enforcement.

“The authorities in Chile are just now waking upàand becoming aware of the impact of salmon farming,” because “the industry has always been one step ahead,” said Pinto.

The lower house of Congress held a special session in early July to assess the impacts of salmon farming.

Labour Minister Osvaldo Andrade told Congress on that occasion that between 2003 and 2005, 572 inspections were carried out in the salmon industry, 404 of which ended in a fine.

Andrade said the industry’s accident rate stood at 10.62 percent in 2005, higher than the national average, with high rates of serious and fatal accidents, mainly among employees working in the pens. This kind of work – including repairs of the pens – is mainly carried out by subcontractors.

The congressional session decided to launch a 90-day investigation into environmental, health and labour conditions in the industry.

These conditions were protested by 420 employees of AquaChile, the biggest salmon farming company in the country and the second biggest in the world, in a two-week strike.

The striking workers, who returned to their jobs on Jul. 25, were demanding a raise of 26,000 pesos (around 50 dollars), while the company only offered 4,000.

During the strike, the workers held street protests, in which property was destroyed and demonstrators were arrested. Ten of the employees also temporarily occupied the cathedral in the city of Puerto Montt, 1,022 km south of Santiago.

Although an agreement was reached, the workers plan to take the company to court for anti-union practices, because it negotiated with non-unionised workers, who allegedly received better benefits than the workers who went on strike.

In the end, the company appeared to have won out, granting a raise of just 4,000 pesos a month (seven dollars) for 2006 and offering similar amounts for 2007 and 2008.

The company, however, reported that the collective agreement included new benefits, like bonuses, student scholarships, housing and credit programmes, and life insurance.

Rain said the huge profits that salmon farming corporations are raking in have had no impact on the wages earned by their employees, and are not being channeled back into local communities either.

Legislators have thus proposed charging royalties, especially given the fact that the firms do not pay for the concessions granted by the state.

Last year, Chile exported 383,700 tons of salmon, which brought in 1.7 billion dollars in revenues, 20 percent up from 2004, according to SalmónChile. This year, earnings are expected to reach two billion dollars.

The biggest importers of Chilean salmon are Japan and the United States.

The United States and Japan are the world’s leaders in the harvest of wild salmon, while Norway and Chile are the biggest producers of farmed salmon, accounting for 38.7 and 37.9 percent of the global total, respectively.