A foreign-owned salmon farming company is under fire for rolling out antibiotics and suffocating live fish as it deals with a disease outbreak that has caused a mass die-off in Tasmania.
Huon Aquaculture, owned by controversial Brazilian food processing giant JBS, started dispending antibiotics in its feed last month to combat rickettsia bacteria disease, upsetting local residents who fear it could be consumed by wild fish.
The salmon farming operation was being personally run by Henry Batista, son of billionaire former JBS chairman Wesley Batista, but he left during the same week as the mass die-off to run brands and snacking at company subsidiary Pilgrim’s Europe.
Shortly after being parachuted in as Huon CEO, Batista was criticised for saying JBS would invest hundreds of millions in the state, but only if salmon farming regulations were reviewed.
JBS bought Huon shortly after snapping up Australia’s biggest pork producer Rivalea. It then brought in migrant labour to work at Rivalea’s pork processing plant in Corowa, NSW, sparking anger from locals and a protest by nationalist activists last year.
The company said on Thursday it had launched a “full investigation” into footage shared by the Bob Brown Foundation (BFF) of live salmon being sealed into tubs with dead fish, an apparent breach of humane slaughter policies.
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“We are extremely disappointed. These actions do not represent our standard operating procedures,” general manager marine operators David Morehead told ABC News.
“In ordinary circumstances, it is rare for a moribund fish to be pumped during mortality retrieval and, if needed, appropriate euthanasia processes would be followed.”
The Bob Brown Foundation said the footage should result in the RSPCA dropping its certification of salmon farmed by Huon Aquaculture, which is the only company out of three operating in the state to be accredited.
Huon Aquaculture said it started using oxytetracycline antibiotics in fish feed to battle the bacterial disease, which by some estimates has killed millions of salmon and is causing mortality rates of up to 10% in some farming pens.
The company said a vaccine had been developed, but some fish had been put to sea before it could be administered.
In 2023 another salmon farm operator, Tassal, used 675kg of the same antibiotic to deal with an outbreak of a different disease. Tassal pens have also been hit by rickettsia, and BFF activists have shared footage of hundreds of dead fish.
Advocacy group Neighbours of Fish Farms (NOFF) said the use of antibiotics was “unacceptable” and put the whole community at risk.
“Just last year antibiotics were found in wild fish near salmon farms at levels nearly five times the allowable limit under Australian law,” NOFF spokeswoman Jessica Coughlan said.
“Given that the Channel is such a popular recreational fishing area, the administration of antibiotics into the marine environment is not acceptable.
“Antibiotic resistance has been declared by the World Health Organisation to be one of the top 10 killers by 2050.”
EPA Tasmania director Wes Ford responded to community concerns by saying the public could choose to fish elsewhere.
“If individuals are concerned at all about potentially having antibiotics in wild fish, then of course they can choose to fish further away from the [affected] lease,” he told ABC News.
Header image: Live salmon being suffocated (Bob Brown Foundation).
