Tasmania's big three salmon operations are foreign-owned. Here's a look at how the industry operates overseas

Tasmania's salmon industry has faced considerable controversy in recent months.

From mass fish deaths to animal cruelty claims, salmon escapes, algal blooms and claims salmon farming is threatening the future of a species, a lot of pressure has piled on the industry.

But is Tasmania alone in the world with salmon farming being a controversial topic?

The answer is no, overseas counterparts have been fighting battles of their own for decades, largely linked to the impact of farmed salmon on declining wild salmon populations.

Worth an estimated $US20 billion ($32 billion) worldwide, commercial Atlantic salmon farming has spread to waters off Russia, Scandinavia, North America, the United Kingdom and Chile.

And while those global economic powerhouses may seem worlds apart from Australia's most southern state, there are plenty of parallels between how the industries are managed — and how the public has responded.

Here is how a few of the larger players operate.

Canada

• Industry size: 4th largest in the world
• Salmon production: 90,000 tonnes per year (2023)

Across the ocean, the world's fourth-largest producer of farmed salmon is, like Tasmania, also concentrated around an island.

The majority of Canada's salmon pens are set on the west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia (BC).

But the industry there is facing an uncertain future.

Dominated by open-net pens owned by Norwegian giants Mowi, Cermaq and Greig, Canada's production blossomed for decades, before plummeting by about 45 per cent in the last few years.

That followed the closure of multiple farms in BC after various environmental action groups documented sea lice outbreaks and other diseases among farmed fish.

In 2024, the Canadian government announced it would ban open-pen salmon farms in BC's coastal waters by June 2029, citing the need to protect native populations of wild Pacific salmon.

The industry has since hit back, arguing that timeframe was unrealistic and that land-based or contained salmon farming was unfeasible.

With a federal election slated for April 28, the salmon sector is hoping to convince the next leader to overturn the planned ban.

However, the ban in BC won't directly affect companies like Cooke Seafood — owner of Tasmanian producer Tassal — which operates its farms on Canada's east coast.

Cooke, a Canadian multinational that grew from a family-ran salmon farm in New Brunswick to become the world's largest, privately owned seafood company, bought Tasmania's Tassal in 2022.

The company is no stranger to controversy.

Cooke's Canadian subsidiary, Kelly Cove Ltd, was fined half a million dollars in 2013 for releasing an agricultural pesticide into the ocean in an attempt to address a major sea lice infestation.

On its website, Cooke says it is "dedicated to our role as environmental stewards, and through our many certifications and partnerships with research institutions, we continue to set the highest standards for responsible harvesting and sustainable processes across all lines of business".

The company currently has plans to more than triple its production on Canada's east coast.

Norway

• Industry size: Largest in the world
• Salmon production: 1.2 million tonnes per year (2023)

Norway is the world's largest farmed salmon producer, exporting roughly 1.2 million tonnes annually — more than 10 times the size of Tasmania's industry (83,000 tonnes in 2020-21).

The sector has expanded dramatically since the 1970s, with open-net pens stretching across its long coastline and into its fjords.

The Scandinavian country produces more than half of the world's farmed Atlantic salmon, and last year its exports were worth $US10 billion.

Notably, it is also the birthplace of the world's largest salmon producers, multinationals with fingers in almost every salmon-producing country.

But while farms are booming, wild Atlantic salmon stocks in Norway are at historic lows, and in 2021, the species was added to the list of its threatened species.

Global warming has been blamed for this, but not everyone agrees.

Investigative journalist Simon Saetre, who co-authored The New Fish after a five-year investigation into the salmon industry, says commercial salmon production has also played a major role.

Mr Saetre said negative perceptions of the industry in Norway had become more prominent in the last few years.

"The Norwegian salmon industry has started a big campaign trying to say to the people, 'we are not good enough but we are working on some solutions'," he said.

"They have had campaigns before, but people see what's happening in the salmon pens, the pictures of salmon with big wounds, deformed salmon, diseases on the fish, they see it in the media.

Chile

• Industry size: 2nd largest in the world
• Salmon production: 727,000 tonnes per year, estimated (2024)

Chile exports around a million tonnes of salmon, with a turnover of $US6 billion, and employs more than 70,000 people. That makes it the world's second-largest producer.

Farming in Chile has also grown dramatically in recent decades, concentrated in the south of the country, along its coastline fjords and islands.

But its salmon industry has also been struggling to deal with its own government regulations, social licence to operate and environmental problems.

Farms there have one of the highest uses of antibiotics in the world because of harmful algal blooms.

Late last year, the green light was given to Chile to export its fresh Atlantic and coho salmon fillets to Australia.

The Tasmanian salmon industry fears imports will bring new diseases into the country. 

For biosecurity reasons, fresh Chilean salmon fillets are not allowed into the state.

The Coalition says it will ban Chilean salmon imports if it wins the upcoming federal election.

Liberal senator Jonathon Duniam said the import risk analysis behind the decision to allow Chilean salmon into Australia was 25 years old.

Federal Labor Agriculture Minister Julie Collins said she stood by the government's decision.

"We are a free-trading nation," she said.

"We have free trade agreements with other countries, where we don't put tariffs on other people's products."

Scotland

• Industry size: 3rd largest in the world
• Salmon production: 185,000 tonnes per year (2024)

More than 200 salmon farms are dotted along the western edge of mainland Scotland, pushing out into the lochs and coastlines of the remote Hebrides, Shetland and Orkney isles.

Once made up of more than 150 independent businesses, Scotland's farms have been largely bought up by foreign interests over the last 40 years.

The owners of the country's salmon farms include Norway-linked Mowi, Scottish Sea Farms and Grieg, Canada's Cooke , the US's Loch Duart and the Faroe Islands' Bakkafrost.

Exporting more than 101,000 tonnes of salmon a year, the country is the third-largest producer in the world and directly employs about 2,200 people, according to the Scottish government.

The sector hasn't got off scot-free from its own share of environmental challenges.

In 2023, the International Union for Conservation of Nature declared wild Atlantic salmon endangered in the United Kingdom.

In the last few years, the sector has been hit by RSPCA certification suspensions triggered by covert video footage, unprecedented die-offs caused by jellyfish blooms, lice infestations and fish escapes.

Among that, industry trade body Salmon Scotland last year was successful in an application to drop the word "farmed" from the front of packaging.

The move attracted further criticism from animal welfare campaigners.

Can salmon farming be done on land?

In the wake of all the controversies and concerns, the investment tide has slowly been turning towards exploring 100 per cent land-based and in-ocean closed containment systems, as more eco-friendly alternatives.

Advocates say they have a lower environmental footprint, and reduce the risk of fish escapes and disease.

Salmon Tasmania, the state's peak body representing producers, believes such operations would be unviable and too costly.

"In the event that 100 per cent land-based salmon farming did become commercially viable, the facilities would be built closer to market areas on the mainland. Not regional Tasmania," according to its own fact sheet on the topic.

In Canada, Brian Kingzett from the British Columbia Salmon Farmers Association, said if there was a business case for it, they would be doing it.

"Unfortunately, around the world in many jurisdictions, the science is suffering from well-meant, but often misguided, environmentalism," he said.

On the back of the recent mass salmon mortality event in Tasmania's south, Australian online seafood guide GoodFish is encouraging people to swap farmed salmon for other Australian species.

In the UK, a growing number of chefs and restaurants have backed conservation charity WildFish's call to boycott farmed salmon in its Off the Table campaign, because of concerns over fish welfare and environmental issues.

Tasmania's three main salmon farming companies — Petuna, Tassal and Huon Aquaculture — did not respond to requests for comment.

Petuna is owned by New Zealand's Sealord.

Huon Aquaculture is owned by Brazil's JBS, the largest meat-processing company in the world, which has previously been rocked by scandal.