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Chile’s Antibiotics Use on Salmon Farms Dwarfs That of a Top Rival’s

New York Times
July 26, 2009
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

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ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay — Chile used almost 350 times more antibiotics in its farmed salmon in 2008 than Norway, its chief competitor and the largest salmon producer in the world, according to official data from both countries.

Chile’s Economy Ministry revealed this month that Chile used almost 718,000 pounds of antibiotics in 2008 and more than 850,000 pounds in 2007.

Based on information published by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, that was about 346 times the amount of antibiotics Norway used in 2008 (2,075 pounds), and almost 600 times the amount Norway used in 2007.

Chile’s economy minister, Hugo Lavados, detailed Chile’s use of antibiotics in salmon production in response to a request for information by the environmental group Oceana under the country’s new information access law. It was the first time the government had released such figures publicly, environmental groups said.

“The ministry’s numbers confirm that the Chilean salmon industry has abused the use of antibiotics,” said Alex Munoz, Oceana’s vice president for South America. “They also show that the Chilean government has placed a higher priority on ensuring the profitability of a business sector than protecting consumers and the nation’s ecosystems.”

Chile, the world’s second biggest salmon exporter, has been struggling since 2007 to contain the spread of a virus that is killing millions of its fish. The industry has said it needs the antibiotics to combat other fish-borne illnesses like rickettsia, parasitic bacteria carried by sea lice, which causes infection-prone lesions. Environmentalists have blamed unsanitary conditions, including cramped pens, for giving rise to the illnesses.

In recent years Chile has been the biggest supplier of salmon to the United States. Some companies, including Safeway and, more recently, Wal-Mart, have reduced purchases of Chilean salmon because of concerns about the illnesses.

Officials from SalmonChile, the industry group, could not be reached for comment on Sunday. In an interview on CNN Chile on Friday, Cesar Barros, president of SalmonChile, defended the use of antibiotics as necessary to prevent bacterial illnesses. He said that in Norway’s early days of salmon farming it had used twice the amount of antibiotics that Chile is using, before eventually developing vaccines to deal with its illnesses.

“You have to use antibiotics so that the fish don’t die,” Mr. Barros said in the interview.

The information from the Economy Ministry showed about one-third of the antibiotics being used in Chile corresponded to antibiotics from the quinolone family, which are not approved for use by the United States Food and Drug Administration. Last year the F.D.A. cited three salmon companies operating in Chile, including a Norwegian company, for using unapproved antibiotics and other unapproved drugs.

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