Taiwanese Authorities Detect Banned Substance In Chilean Salmon

An influential environmental NGO called Ecoceanos is demanding the Chilean government take action in the wake of a recent report that Taiwanese health authorities detected a banned substance in salmon imported from Chile.

This past weekend, an online news source called the China Post reported that a 523-kilogram shipment of Chilean salmon was found to contain Malachite Green, a potentially carcinogenic chemical that is prohibited in numerous countries, including Chile and Taiwan (ST, Sept 26). Application of Malachite Green – which for years salmon farmers used as an anti-fungal drug – was outlawed in Chile in 2005.

The salmon in question, which arrived in Taiwan on Sept. 14, was imported by a local Costco branch, according to the China Post. For now it remains in customs.

So far in Chile, information about the Malachite Green discovery has been scant. All the more reason, says Ecoceanos, why Chilean authorities must investigate the matter and determine both where the salmon was raised, and which of the various salmon companies operating here was responsible for using the banned substance.

“Together with artisan fisher groups, as well as national and international consumers, we demand that the Chilean government carry out an investigation and bring charges against those irresponsible companies that continue to systematically violate the law. (The companies) are polluting the nation’s valuable aquatic ecosystems and putting the health of international consumers at risk,” the NGO announced.

Ecoceanos would also like to know why Chile’s sanitary control system was not able to detect the problem before the salmon was exported. “We want to see how the tracking system, which is supposed to guarantee a healthy product for consumers, works,” the organization added.

This is certainly not the first time Chilean salmon has been found to contain banned chemicals. Earlier this year Chilean salmon producers ran into trouble when health officials in Great Britain found a shipment of Chilean salmon to contain Crystal Violet, another illegal substance used to treat fungi and parasites (ST, March 2). And on several occasions between 2003 and 2004, Dutch authorities complained about the presence in Chilean salmon of Malachite Green, which at the time was banned in Western Europe but was not yet prohibited in Chile (ST, Sept. 28, 2004).

“The problem comes from the fact that there isn’t the capacity here to properly monitor (chemical usage),” said environmental consultant Cristián Perez of the Washington D.C.-based NGO Pure Salmon Campaign.

Like Ecoceanos, Perez, thinks Chilean authorities need to get involved in the matter and, once they are able to identify the responsible parties, press charges. “This is an illegal substance we’re talking about. It’s not an antibiotic. It’s not a substance that is legally approved the government, but rather one that’s illegal… The government should take all the legal measures available to it,” he told the Patagonia Times.

Chemical scares of this nature represent a potential nightmare for Chile’s booming aquaculture industry, which last year exported some US$2.2 billion worth of farmed salmon and trout. Based mostly in Region X, the rapidly expanding industry is a vitally important part of southern Chile’s economy.

The industry, though, is also a frequent target of criticism by environmentalists, who complain that the largely unregulated farms are polluting southern Chile’s lakes, rivers and estuaries.

Labor activists also lament the industry’s low wages and hazardous working conditions. Earning on average approximately US$400 per month – a low wage even by Chilean standards – salmon industry workers are prone to a particularly high accident rate, according to the Chilean environmental policy group Fundación Terram.

In a report published earlier this year, Terram noted that the accident rate in Chile’s salmon industry – 10.43 percent according to the Chilean Security Association – is well above the national average of 7.96 percent. Other studies put the industry’s accident rate as high as 30 percent.

Particularly vulnerable are the industry’s estimated 4,000 divers, a number of whom have drowned or died as a result of Decompression Illness. Just last month a diver named Pedro Pablo Alvarado died while fixing underwater netting on a salmon farm off the coast of Chiloé.

“In processing plants there are also very high accident statistics. Workers are exposed to a very monotonous, mechanical job that produces medical problems such as lumbago and tendonitis,” said Terram’s Francisco Pinto, an economist.

By Benjamin Witte (benwitteATsantiagotimes.cl)