Did you think eating farmed fish saved wild fish?

So many of the people we chat to think that if they eat farmed fish, they’re helping to reduce the amount of wild fish taken from the ocean. But what most people don’t know is that farmed salmon are fed wild fish, and it takes almost twice as many kilograms of wild fish to make one kilogram of feedlot salmon.


So the short story is - feedlot salmon brands take more wild fish from the ocean than the amount of fish they produce - they are draining our oceans of fish.


Some of the wild fish used for farmed salmon feed come from heavily fished areas where people go hungry - like Peruvian Anchovies caught off Peru. While big salmon brands often say these are forage fish that people can’t eat, independent experts don’t agree. Public campaigns increased Peru’s direct human consumption of anchoveta from 35,000 metric tons in 2006 to 120,000 metric tons in 2012 — an improvement, but still only a fraction of the total catch. The remaining 98 percent of the anchoveta catch is still taken by multinational companies and used to feed farmed fish and livestock.


Leaving these fish for locals to eat would have massive economic, environmental and social benefits.