The Sustainable Fisheries Partnership has released a discussion paper which challenges the salmon aquaculture sector to be more proactive in publicly disclosing information about environmental impacts.
It also says that the industry would benefit from a model for industry-wide best practice, instead of adopting different approaches to data transparency when it operates in different countries.
The paper argues that giving the public more information on environmental impacts would benefit the salmon industry because proactively disclosing information would be a more effective strategy in responding to critics than withholding data and would build public confidence.
The paper says that increased transparency is needed by investors before they will invest in the industry. The salmon industry also needs to align itself with global best practice, as comprehensive environmental disclosure is becoming an essential part of corporate responsibility for many commercial sectors, and failure to adequately disclose environmental impacts may act as a barrier to certification.
Existing official arrangements for disclosing environmental data in Norway, Scotland, Chile and Canada were also reviewed. The paper concluded that arrangements in Norway probably give the greatest transparency and that companies that work to these standards could apply the same approach when operating in different countries.
The salmon industry would benefit from a coordinated approach to environmental data disclosure with leading players agreeing global guidelines that would be set at the highest current standard, the paper states. Such data release could be focussed around specific water bodies rather than individual farms, and so provide meaningful data for stakeholders such as wild salmon fishermen and conservationists without exposing individual farms to criticism.
