Marine Harvest decontaminates fish feed (finally)!

Marine Harvest, the world's largest salmon farming company, has finally announced plans to decontaminate the fish oil which is used to feed its farmed salmon - read their press release (3 April) online here

Whilst the decision to come clean is welcomed, why has it taken so long for Marine Harvest to attempt to wash the cancer-causing chemicals out of their fish feed? In fact, the salmon farming industry has known since the 1970s that fish feed is contaminated with chemicals such as DDT, dieldrin, dioxins and PCBs. As I wrote in my chapter - 'Silent Spring of the Sea' - in the award-winning book 'Stain Upon the Sea' (Harbour Publishing) published a decade ago in 2004:

Read in full online here

The damning revelations of cancer-causing chemicals in farmed salmon, reported in the journal Science in 2004, were long known to the salmon farming industry (just as the tobacco industry knew about the effects of nicotine and the links between smoking and cancer decades before they became widely known publicly).

Read the 2004 Science paper online here

Back in 2007, the Pure Salmon Campaign urged the salmon farming industry to decontaminate the fish feed fed to their farmed salmon. Read a presentation - You Are What You Eat - by the Pure Salmon Campaign at the 2007 Seafood Summit:

The presentation included:

The presentation included photos of the various 'washing machines' available to decontaminate fish feed:

Read in full via You Are What You Eat

Just last month, the UK's biggest-selling newspaper (the Daily Mail), published damning findings of cancer-causing contaminants such as DDT and Dieldrin in Norwegian and Scottish farmed salmon on sale in supermarkets across England, Wales and Scotland.