Sjókvíaeldi á laxi er ,,vistfræðilegur glæpur gegn mannkyninu“ er niðurstaða bókar sem var að koma út í Frakklandi. Höfundurinn beinir kastljósinu sérstaklega að Skotlandi en þaðan kemur um 60 prósent af eldislaxi sem seldur er í Frakklandi. Iðnaðurinn fær falleinkun á öllum sviðum, vegna mengunarinnar sem hann losar óhreinsaða beint í hafið, vegna hrikalegar meðferðar á eldislöxunum og áhrifunum á lífríkið, sérstaklega villta laxastofna.
Fjallað er um bókina í skoska dagblaðinu The Herald:
…Maxime Carsel is an investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker who has written a book, published this week, about the industry.
Titled Un poison commé saumon (A Poison Called Salmon, the title being a play on ‘poisson’, the French word for fish) it represents „a plea for a change of model and an urgent awareness of the future of aquatic ecosystems, coupled with a reflection on our relationship to consumption“.
He hopes to eventually publish the book, the preface of which by Paul Watson calls the industry ‘an ecological crime against humanity’, in English in the UK.
Mr Carsel tells The Herald: „We French are among the biggest salmon eaters on the planet, without being producers.
„We import 99% of our salmon and we are the largest customer of Scottish salmon farming. On average, each French person eats four kilos of salmon per year per inhabitant.
…While concerns have been raised about the environmental impact of fish farming, it’s not just domestically that the impact is felt.
Farmed salmon are fed on a combination of fishmeal, oils and vegetable material, as well as an antioxidant, astaxanthin, to turn the flesh pink.
Astaxanthin is found naturally in the wild in the shrimp and small fish salmon consume, and were it not added to farmed salmon their flesh would be grey.
The fish they do consume, in the form of fishmeal, are often fished from the waters off Africa and South America, devastating the local industry.
France24 reported that Senegalese fishermen were fleeing their native land and heading to Europe due to the overfishing of the Round sardinella.
Gaoussou Gueye, president of the Confederation of Traditional Fishermen in West Africa, told the outlet: „The demand for fodder fish to feed salmon and carp has generated an extremely voracious industry that has monopolised fishing resources, because it takes five tonnes of sardinella to produce a single tonne of fish.“
In total, around a quarter of wild fish caught globally is ground into meal. Salmon Scotland says no Scottish salmon farmers use marine ingredients sourced from West African fisheries. Campaigners such as Feedback say complex supply chains mean „there is very little transparency for consumers and independent observers such as Feedback to interrogate these kinds of claims“.