Disturbing underwater footage claiming to show deformed and diseased salmon swimming in Macquarie Harbour on Tasmania’s West Coast has raised further alarm bells for environmental activists.
Greens Senator for Tasmania Nick McKim condemned the industry following the release of the footage by UK charity Green Britain Foundation.
“This is a grotesque industry that has a business model based on animal cruelty,” McKim said.
“Salmon pens are torture pens, and the entire industry is built on animal cruelty, environmental damage and species extinction.”
The Bob Brown Foundation claim it “is known that genetically-modified or triploid salmon have been grown in the harbour – a reason the RSPCA has never certified fish from there”.
“It is also the very salmon farming that Albanese and Dutton got together to protect from environmental laws last month,” the Foundation said.
They are calling on the state and federal governments to affirm or deny the use of triploids and for Premier Jeremy Rockliff to allow independent investigators inside the factory fish farms in Macquarie Harbour.
The Green Britain Foundation say their footage was taken from inside a salmon pen at Macquarie Harbour this month.
Salmon Tasmania CEO Luke Martin rejected the claims, questioning the footage’s origin and defending the industry’s practices.
“The independent EPA has confirmed Macquarie Harbour is in the best health it’s been in for more than a decade, and IMAS says skate numbers are the same as 2014,” Martin said.
“Tasmanian salmon is the finest in the world and our salmon farmers maintain rigorous quality control right through the harvesting and production processes.”
“We don’t know who this foreign activist organisation is, don’t know where this footage has been obtained, and from their statement they clearly have zero understanding of the robust regulatory framework and environmental monitory in Macquarie harbour.”
Martin said that deformed fish are not processed for human consumption.
