Salmon farming
Salmon farming promises abundance and efficiency but conceals ecological costs and distant social impacts.
A salmon farm in the Scottish Highlands
Salmon farming promises abundance and efficiency but conceals ecological costs and distant social impacts.
A salmon farm in the Scottish Highlands
Salmon farming has become a defining feature of modern food systems, transforming a once seasonal luxury into a year-round, global commodity. Concentrated largely in the cold coastal waters of Northern Europe, the industry is presented as efficient, high-tech, and sustainable. Behind this image lies a production model that depends on intensive farming, complex global supply chains, and the extraction of resources far beyond the places where salmon are consumed.
At first glance salmon farms appear clean, orderly, and controlled. Floating cages sit quietly in sheltered waters, masking the scale of industrial activity beneath. Feed deliveries, chemical treatments, mortalities, and waste remain largely unseen, displaced offshore or overseas. The visual calm contrasts sharply with the ecological and social pressures embedded within the system itself globally today overall.
Salmon farming is designed to be out of view. Beneath calm waters, waste accumulates, diseases spread, and fish suffer high mortality rates. Distance from land and public oversight allows environmental damage and routine animal cruelty to remain largely unseen.
Each open-pen cage for spans around 35 metres across
Salmon cages float from the surface down to 20-30 metres deep
What appears modest from the shoreline is part of an intensive global industry producing millions of tonnes of salmon each year. Concentrated in a handful of countries, industrial farms now supply nearly half of all salmon consumed worldwide.
Young salmon are cultured in large hatcheries based on land, but needing large amounts of fresh water
From hatchery to harvest, salmon farming operates on enormous numbers. Each year, tens of millions of fish die before reaching market, lost to disease, stress, and treatment regimes. Mortality is not an accident of the system, it is built into industrial scale production.
Each open pen can hold tens of thousands of fish, packed tightly together to maximise yield. Storms, equipment failure, and human error mean millions escape into the wild over time, altering ecosystems and threatening already vulnerable wild salmon populations.
Each pen can hold hundres of thousands of individual fish
Scotland and Norway has hundreds of salmon farms
Hundreds of salmon farms now line the coasts of Norway and Scotland, operated by a shrinking number of powerful companies. As production intensifies and ownership consolidates, profits continue to rise while environmental and social risks are increasingly absorbed by others.