WAV Comment: Great work as always from friends Phil and all the crew; exposing the real truth about what lies beneath the surface. More Intensive farming under the waves; out of sight, out of mind ?

From Compassion In World Farming (CIWF), London.

Murky depths of the Scottish salmon industry exposed in new undercover investigation | Compassion in World Farming (ciwf.org.uk)

Our new investigation into the Scottish salmon industry, released today (23^rd March), uncovers the hidden suffering of salmon on an industry-wide and endemic scale, breaches in animal welfare legislation and shocking mortality rates.

Warning: Some viewers may find the following footage distressing.

UNCOVERING UNDERWATER CAGES

Our undercover investigation – supported by a global network of 30 organisations – and accompanying report ‘Underwater Cages, Parasites & Dead Fish: Why a Moratorium on Scottish Salmon Farming Expansion is Imperative’  highlights the grim reality for many fish raised in sea cages to produce world-famous Scottish salmon.

Scottish salmon is big business. Every year, 24 to 56 million of these fish are shipped to over 50 countries – making Scotland the world’s third-largest exporter. Worryingly the Scottish government supports plans for massive industry expansion by 2030. But while the industry expands, animals pay the price.

APPALLING FINDINGS

We investigated 22 farms between September and November 2020, using both drone technology and, at 6 farms, underwater divers. On several of these farms, investigators found severe sea lice infestations and high levels of mortalities. They also found fish crammed in barren underwater cages, where these natural migrators have nothing to do but swim aimlessly for up to 2 years. These animals suffer to such an extent that as many as a quarter will die before they even make it to slaughter.

The appalling findings were documented on farms owned by all five of Scotland’s largest salmon producers (Cooke Aquaculture, Grieg Seafood, Mowi, Scottish Sea Farms and The Scottish Salmon Company), which together account for over 96% of the industry.

SALMON SUFFERING BROUGHT TO THE SURFACE

“Salmon are silently suffering, out of sight, in cruel underwater factory farms across Scotland. Even the experienced investigators were shocked at what they found,” said Sophie Peutrill, our Global Campaign Manager for fish welfare. “The footage reveals salmon with deformities and disease, missing eyes and large chunks of flesh and skin being eaten away by sea lice. This is completely unacceptable.

“Salmon are sentient beings – they should not be subjected to such awful misery. There is an industry-wide failure to protect these animals, and this must change. We need an immediate halt on the continued expansion of Scottish salmon farming”

PUTTING PRESSURE ON THE PLANET

Not only is salmon farming bad for animal welfare, but it is also damaging the environment. Organic and chemical waste from Scottish salmon farms is changing the chemistry of sediments and killing marine life on the seabed. Waste from farms can lead to poor water quality and harmful algal blooms. Millions of tonnes of wild-caught fish are reduced to fishmeal and fish oil in order to feed fish in intensive farms, and the list goes on.

“Given the numerous welfare and environmental issues within the Scottish salmon industry, plans to expand are completely irresponsible”, said Dr Krzysztof Wojtas, our Head of Fish Policy.

“We are calling on the Scottish Government for a moratorium on the expansion of the Scottish Salmon industry. Confining carnivorous species in underwater cages and depleting our oceans of wild fish in order to feed them, is pure madness. Ultimately, we directly challenge whether farming essentially wild, migratory fish, such as salmon, has any place in a sustainable food system.”

CALL TO HALT TROUBLED WATERS

The Scottish salmon farming industry is rife with fish welfare issues and serious environmental problems. At current production levels sea lice infestation and disease are out of control, causing fish suffering on an alarming scale and threatening wild fish populations. 

To address the issues brought to the surface by our investigation we have launched an open letter to the Scottish government, urgently calling for a moratorium on the expansion of the industry, with a view to phasing out intensive salmon farming.

ACT NOW TO STOP SALMON SUFFERING

Please sign our open letter to the Scottish Government, demanding a moratorium to stop the runaway growth of Scottish salmon farming.

Regards Mark

Beef giant JBS vows to go deforestation-free — 14 years from now

• JBS, a giant company implicated in multiple cases of large-scale forest clearing in Brazil, recently made a commitment to achieve zero deforestation across its global supply chain by 2035. Environmentalists argue this pledge is grossly insufficient.
• In a new Soy and Cattle Deforestation Tracker, JBS scores just a single point out of 100. Its nearest competitors, Minerva and Marfrig, have scores of 46/100 and 40/100 respectively.
• Tagging and tracking systems to ensure transparency along the entire beef supply have long been proposed, but JBS has resisted disclosing its full list of suppliers.
• Under present conditions, Brazil is losing forest cover at the fastest rate in more than a decade, and this deforestation is driven largely by the meatpacking industry.

JBS, the largest animal protein producer on Earth, made headlines last week with a commitment to achieve zero deforestation across its global supply chain by 2035 and net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. The Brazilian meatpacking company congratulated itself as “the first major company in its sector to set a net-zero target.”

But to experienced industry observers, this announcement is hardly cause for celebration.

“JBS has just promised at least 14 more years of forest destruction,” said Sarah Lake in an interview. Lake is vice-president and global director for Latin America at Mighty Earth, a global NGO that runs environmental campaigns.

According to Mighty Earth’s Soy and Cattle Deforestation Tracker, the first of its kind, JBS is linked to 42,538 hectares (105,114 acres) of deforested land in the two years since March 2019, with half of that area classified as possibly illegal. (Some deforestation is legal in Brazil.)

Mighty Earth’s tracker links cases of large-scale land use conversion to major soy traders and meatpackers that have until now found it easy to evade accountability for forest destruction. In partnership with Aidenvironment, the tracker scores companies out of 100 points, with 1 being the worst and 100 being the best rating.

JBS has the distinction of having, by a wide margin, the most unfavorable rating of the 10 companies tracked: just 1/100. The next-largest beef supply companies, Minerva and Marfrig, also from Brazil, have scores of 46/100 and 40/100 respectively.

“The climate is changing now. Forests are burning today. That JBS felt the need to make this announcement shows they are feeling the pressure to act; the paltry scope of the pledge demonstrates the need for us to keep that pressure on,” said Lake, who earned a Ph.D. in economic and environmental sociology from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a dissertation on the beef industry.

JBS was founded in 1953 in Anápolis, a small city in Brazil’s heartland, by a butcher named José Batista Sobrinho. In 1955, Juscelino Kubitschek won Brazil’s presidential election on a promise to build a brand-new modernist capital in the middle of the forest.

A few years later, Brasília began to spring up just a two-hour drive from Batista’s abattoir. Captained by Batista’s sons, JBS has grown at a staggering rate. Today the company slaughters almost 35,000 animals a day in Brazil. Its global revenues oscillate between $40 billion and $50 billion a year, with exports comprising 46% of total sales. Year after year, JBS turns profits for shareholders by channeling the appetites of hundreds of thousands diners in the United States, Europe and China into the sacking of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth.

“JBS has repeatedly made false promises regarding their deforestation agenda,” Lake said.

JBS had previously captured headlines and goodwill in September 2020, by announcing a purportedly new commitment to address deforestation occasioned by its indirect suppliers in the Amazon. But the announcement merely restates a commitment from 2009, a pledge it has failed to deliver on in the intervening decade.

“While promising to maybe someday save the Amazon, JBS and the other leading beef processors seem willing to butcher [the forests] today, making mincemeat of their sustainability pledges,” Daniela Montalto of Greenpeace told Mongabay last month.

“We would like JBS to publicly disclose suppliers,” Lake, of Mighty Earth, told Mongabay.

JBS says that sharing information on its sprawling network of 50,000 suppliers would compromise its business. But industry experts say that such openness will soon be an industry norm and expected of all meatpackers. “JBS can either help usher in that transparency, or obstruct it,” Lake said.

JBS has repeatedly been implicated in what is called “cattle laundering,” an arrangement by which calves are fattened on newly deforested lands or lands within Indigenous reserves and then transferred to so-called legal ranches free of the blemish of deforestation. From these ranches they are sold to meatpackers such as JBS who can plead ignorance of the origin.

“Looking at their direct suppliers only and then claiming they don’t have illegal deforestation is like me saying there’s no deforestation at my local grocery store and so my food is totally sustainable,” explained Lake.

“One of the main challenges for monitoring the entire cattle supply chain, including indirect suppliers, is the unavailability of the information that allows tracking of all supply chain movements in Brazil,” a representative of JBS told Mongabay last year.

That opacity may be all too convenient for JBS. Campaigners have pointed out that a tagging and digital tracing system — as neighboring Uruguay implemented with success two decades ago — would make full calving-to-slaughterhouse accountability straightforward. Others have proposed a more affordable system that would use existing veterinary records known as GTAs to similarly track indirect suppliers.

If such proposals have not been implemented in Brazil, it may have something to do with the outsized role that the beef lobby plays in government. In 2017, JBS’s controlling shareholder agreed to pay $3.2 billion, one of the biggest fines in global corporate history, after admitting to bribing hundreds of politicians, including three presidents.

Deforestation is not impossible to stop. In the first decade of the new millennium, annual forest loss in Brazil declined by around 80% percent. Various factors contributed to this drop: the deployment of law enforcement, effective satellite monitoring, pressure from environmentalists, and macroeconomic trends. Importantly, this reduction of deforestation was achieved while Brazil’s economy boomed.

Under Jair Bolsonaro’s government, that trend has reversed. According to November 2020 data from INPE, Brazil’s space agency, the country is presently losing forest at the fastest clip in more than a decade. At least 11,088 square kilometers of rainforest in the Amazon basin were razed from August 2019 to July 2020, an area the size of Jamaica.

Beef giant JBS vows to go deforestation-free — 14 years from now (mongabay.com)

Regards Mark – 14 years ? – at a time when there is no Amazon forest ecosystem remaining !

Typical cattle and meat producer.; typical Bolsonaro.