From seasonal cuisine to supermarket commodity: Domestication and mass production of Atlantic salmon

Historically, Atlantic salmon was a seasonal food - fished, eaten and preserved by people around the North Atlantic since the beginning of time. It was both a staple and a luxury, pursued for subsistence, profit, and pleasure.¹

In the mid-19th century, twin forces began acting on wild salmon, leading to the development of the salmon aquaculture industry: the establishment of large scale salmon hatcheries to stock rivers, and the decline in wild salmon populations from overfishing and habitat destruction. 

Although aquaculture has been practiced around the world for thousands of years, growing Atlantic salmon in sea-cages was first attempted in the 1960s in Norway.²

The promise of large-scale harvests, year-round sales, and generous government support caused the industry to spread from Norway. First to Scotland in 1969³, Canada in 1979⁴, Chile, Faroe Islands, U.S.A and Tasmania in the 1980s⁵,⁶, and Iceland in the 1990s⁷.

Wild Atlantic salmon were captured from rivers and intensively bred for traits like fast growth and delayed sexual maturation.⁸ The logic of industrialization took hold and farmed salmon emerged as a buyer-driven global commodity, with constant pressure on growers for more and cheaper fish. 

In the early days of salmon farming, companies experimented with Pacific species like Chinook⁹, but eventually Atlantic salmon came to dominate the industry, and global markets.

Case study: Japan

Salmon farming in Norway began to take root as an industry in the 1960s and 70s, and was firmly established by the 1980s. In fact, Norwegian salmon farmers had improved upon production techniques to such an extent that they found themselves with a surplus of frozen salmon.¹⁰,¹¹,¹²

This “cheap luxury” product needed new markets, to create consumer demand, and Japan was an early test case.¹⁰,¹¹,¹²,¹³

In the mid-1980s, marketer Bjorn Eirik Olsen launched Project Japan, designed to introduce Norwegian farmed salmon to Japanese consumers, who at the time considered raw salmon a parasite-ridden fish with the wrong color, shape and smell for sushi.¹⁰,¹¹,¹²,¹³

Olsen reached a deal with Nichirei, a Japanese food conglomerate. Together, they were able to purchase Norway’s surplus salmon at a greatly reduced price on the condition that they sell it in grocery stores as sushi.¹⁰,¹¹,¹²,¹³

Olsen felt if he could get Japan on board with salmon, the fish’s popularity would ripple out worldwide because so many consumers across the globe viewed Japanese sushi positively, as a refined, clean and desirable way of dining.¹⁰,¹¹,¹²,¹³

The campaign's success hinged on clever rebranding tactics, including renaming Norwegian salmon as "sāmon" to differentiate it from local Pacific salmon varieties, and leveraging celebrity chef endorsements to shift consumer perceptions.¹¹

Today, Japanese businesses import 13,300 metric tons of fresh Atlantic salmon from Norwegian aquaculture companies every year.¹⁴

The downside of “cheap luxury”

The buyer-driven expectation for more and cheaper salmon has pushed salmon farming beyond the biological limits of fish and the surrounding environment.

Although stocking densities vary by country and region, a single site in Newfoundland, Canada, with 10 sea cages is stocked with up to 1-million juvenile salmon¹⁵, compared to an estimated 3.4 million wild adult Atlantic salmon in the entire North Atlantic¹⁶. The extreme, unnatural concentration of salmon in sea cages creates favorable conditions for parasites and viruses.

In Atlantic Canada, for example, the first outbreak of infectious salmon anemia (ISA) was recorded in sea cages in 1996¹⁷, causing wide-spread death among infected fish and leading to the government ordered slaughter of nearly 300,000 salmon in infected areas.¹⁸

Some companies dragged their feet, demanding compensation for the slaughter of their salmon, allowing the disease to spread throughout the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick and eventually to Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Prince Edward Island. 

Compensation programs were established, leading to more that $100 million being transferred from provincial and federal governments to fish farmers in Atlantic Canada. An outbreak of ISA in Chile in 2007 caused a 60% reduction in salmon production and threw over 8,000 people out of work.¹⁹

Today, ISA is considered endemic in Atlantic Canada. Compensation is no longer available, after the Canada Food Inspection Agency ruled that the infected fish could be sold for human consumption.²⁰ In 2001, there were 29-reported outbreaks of the disease in the region, and infections recorded in every year since records began to be kept in 2012.²¹

ISA can infect and kill wild Atlantic salmon, brown trout, and rainbow trout,²² and can be carried by other species like Atlantic herring,²³ a stark example of how industrial salmon farming in sea cages has devastating effects on other fish and fisheries. 

The dense stocking of sea cages, poorly cited farms, and a focus on growing more fish in small areas has harmed local fisheries, and triggered a measure-countermeasure battle with parasites like sea lice.²⁴ Some pesticides have been used haphazardly, leading to resistance in sea lice,²⁵ and some companies have resorted to illegal use of prohibited pesticides, triggering investigations and trials.²⁶

Other interventions like the use of wrasse, a small fish that can eat lice off salmon in sea cages have had mixed results,²⁷ and resulted in extreme mortality rates for the cleaner fish themselves.²⁸ Overall, it is estimated the industry spends $1.3 billion CAD per year fighting against tiny sea lice.²⁹

Farmed salmon also raises human health concerns, thanks to its higher levels of contaminants and the overuse of antibiotics, which may lead to chemical residues and antibiotic resistant bacteria.³⁰

CONCLUSION

The ocean is the last source of readily available, truly wild food on earth. The rise of sea-cage salmon farming is an extension of the industrial agricultural frontier into the sea, creating a need for a product that never existed previously. 

Profitability for salmon farmers depends on externalizing costs, like allowing ocean currents to carry away feces, and dumping plastic garbage along the coast line, rather than paying to dispose of it.³¹

Overall, it is estimated that in the six year period between 2013 and 2019, companies in Canada, Norway, the United Kingdom, and Chile wracked up nearly $70 billion CAD in externalized costs, with $26 billion CAD being directly borne by consumers.³²

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