Salmon is marketed to consumers as the ‘chicken of the sea’ – sold as low-carbon, easy to cook and sustainable. Sales of farmed fish are booming in Europe – the aquaculture sector is now the fastest-growing food sector in the world and is often credited with providing respite for our overfished oceans.
But there’s a catch. The pellets that are fed to popular fish such as salmon and seabass rely on a vital ingredient: fishmeal and fish oil, which is mostly made from small nutritious fish harvested from oceans around the world.
Civil society groups have long raised the alarm about the harms caused by this industry in West Africa, where 38 fishmeal factories are strung along the coastlines of Mauritania, Senegal, and The Gambia.
In the last decade, the fishmeal industry has grown here exponentially, harvesting pelagic fish – like mackerels, sardinellas and sardines – by the tonne. In step, it has brought a host of negative impacts: food insecurity has risen, thousands of women fish workers are jobless, and stocks of target fish species are crashing. None of this chimes well with sustainability-conscious European consumers.
Yet major EU and US companies continue to source from the region, because demand for fishmeal and oil outstrips supply, and West African exports are high quality, made from whole fresh fish. The Dutch-owned aquafeed producers Skretting, Danish feed company Biomar, and US feed-manufacturer Cargill, are among those who continue to source from Mauritania, which is the seventh biggest fish oil importer to the EU.
These three powerful market players are all taking part in voluntary sustainability schemes in the region with other global buyers in the fishmeal and fish oil industry that have been set up in response to a growing outcry at industry harms in West Africa from artisanal fisher organisations, NGOs and the UN’s FAO.
The industry-led schemes are the focus of a new investigation by DeSmog, which has analysed and mapped the overlapping membership of the three initiatives: the certification programme MarinTrust, an industry roundtable for marine ingredients and a Fisheries Improvement Project in Mauritania.
We found that the voluntary schemes were no guarantee of sustainability – riven by conflicts of interest, lacking local representation and failing to protect fish stocks. But despite this, they were referenced frequently by corporations as evidence of their sustainability credentials.
Take the certification programme MarinTrust, which sponsors an “improver” scheme in Mauritania. Our analysis showed that high-level employees from aquafeed giants Cargill and Biomar, and fishmeal traders like Pelagia, are on key committees with oversight of standard-setting for their industry.
As one commentator put it to DeSmog, it’s like the ‘fox guarding the hen house’. MarinTrust itself was set up by the marine ingredients organisation IFFO, a fishmeal trade association, which controls the certification programme’s board. Overall, the industry made up 83 percent of its trustees, far higher than equivalent bodies the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (33 percent) and Marine Stewardship Council (11 percent).
By contrast, the study revealed the total absence of representatives from West African civil society, women fishworkers, and small-scale fishers, despite these communities bearing the brunt of fishmeal industry impacts.
The aquafeed giants Cargill, Skretting, and BioMar involved in the three initiatives are the world’s biggest salmon-feed suppliers. They are anxious to get hold of more certified ingredients: all have plans to expand aquafeed production, and have ambitious, short-term targets for increasing the proportion of fishmeal and oil in their feed that is certified as ‘responsibly sourced’.
Dyhia Belhabib, fisheries programme manager at the non-profit EcoTrust Canada described the industry’s extensive ties to MarinTrust as a “massive conflict of interest”. Our analysis also showed that the Global Roundtable on Marine Ingredients suffers from the same problem, lacking any West African representation and home instead to 14 powerful corporations, lobby groups and certifiers.
The imbalance in favour of industry was a far cry from the transparency and public participation that should be part of any response to the challenges faced in the region, according to Andre Standing, senior adviser at the Coalition for Fair Fisheries Arrangements (CFFA), a platform of European and African-based organisations. “That’s the opposite of a roundtable where people from West Africa are not invited,” he added.
DeSmog also looked at Mauritania's Fisheries Improvement Project (FIP), which was set up by Olvea, a major French exporter of fish oil from the country. Local organisations report better transparency, which is welcomed. But five years after the FIP was set up in 2017, the fishery is still not certified, stocks of the industry’s target fish are overexploited and at risk of collapse.
But major EU, Norwegian and US fish-feed companies continue to source marine ingredients from there.
The sole NGO supporting the FIP stresses that the project has “no claim to sustainability”. Yet the major aquafeed companies talk up their participation in all three of these initiatives in their reports, and at conferences, as evidence of their commitment to responsible practises – and their sourcing policies all allow them to source from FIPs.
Greenpeace Africa told DeSmog that to date none of these three initiatives had improved the situation on the ground. Women fish-workers in Senegal told us their income is down, they can’t pay school fees, and their fish processing sites stand empty.
Meanwhile, families on low incomes can no longer afford to feed fish to their children, who have lost from their diets the complete nutritional package of iron, calcium vitamin A and Omega-3 fatty acids, essential in their first 1,000 days of life for healthy brain development and growth.
Instead, the schemes give European consumers a false sense of safety. The danger is that all these initiatives only serve to legitimise the overfishing of critical fish stocks, and are simply, in the words of one campaigner: “100 percent greenwashing.”
All organisations and individuals mentioned in DeSmog’s investigation were contacted for comment. A set of responses from MarinTrust, Roundtable, and IFFO can be viewed here.
DeSmog’s investigation can be read in full here.
Hazel Healy is DeSmog's UK Editor. She is also a freelance writer and broadcaster specializing in stories about food justice, climate, and migration.
Hazel Healy is DeSmog's UK Editor. She is also a freelance writer and broadcaster specializing in stories about food justice, climate, and migration.