Ninety percent of the salmon consumed in the United States comes from factory-style farms—most of it imported. Until very recently, our biggest supplier was Chile—whose salmon industry is in a state of collapse, ravaged by a virus called “infectious salmon anemia.”
Like U.S. factory meat farms, Chile’s salmon cages veritably runneth over with antibiotics. Earlier this year, the Pew Environmental Group obtained some damning FDA documents about the Chilean salmon industry. The documents revealed that:
Three Chilean salmon farming companies, including the two largest producers of farmed salmon, used a number of drugs not approved by the U.S. government. These chemicals include the antibiotics flumequine and oxolinic acid and the pesticide emamectin benzoate. The documents further show that the farmed salmon containing residues of unapproved chemicals were destined for the U.S. market.