The hidden price of farmed fish: Air pollution, pressured labor and the depletion of untamed fish

As of 2022, greater than half of the seafood eaten worldwide was farm-raised somewhat than caught at sea, a indisputable fact that has been praised as proof that fish farming can meet a rising demand for seafood whereas slowing the collapse of the oceans.

But the unbridled embrace of aquaculture as a sustainable reply to feeding the planet ignores some very actual prices.

The hottest varieties of farmed seafood — salmon, shrimp, trout, seabass, seabream — are fed “fishmeal,” a protein-rich powder or pellet produced from the very varieties of untamed fish that aquaculture is believed to avoid wasting.

In truth, fishmeal is fed to two-thirds of worldwide farmed fish. Before they attain market, some farm-raised salmon eat greater than six occasions their weight in wild-caught fish.

With 1000’s of fish farms worldwide, aquaculture supplies hundreds of thousands of individuals with year-round entry to inexpensive protein. Fish farming can also be a vital supply of jobs, particularly for ladies in India.

But a wide-reaching investigation by The Outlaw Ocean Project, a nonprofit information group primarily based in Washington, D.C., has discovered that the aquaculture {industry}’s reply to worries concerning the planet’s oceans — “develop extra fish so we will catch much less” — is commonly making the very drawback it hoped to unravel worse and harming the individuals it was meant to assist.

The investigation

The corporate affairs of fishmeal — typically out of public view — can contain utilizing pressured labor, poisoning communities, and eradicating the livelihoods of native fishermen.

Fishmeal manufacturing has led to persistent chemical publicity, violent protests — sometimes spurred by the stench from fishmeal factories — and escalating transnational tensions as nations compete for catch. That value is paid primarily by the poorer nations the place the primary ingredient of fishmeal is harvested and processed.

The Outlaw Ocean Project mapped roughly your entire world fishmeal {industry}, together with greater than 1,400 fishmeal factories throughout 64 nations. The effort concerned dozens of journalists from over 15 nations who visited factories and farms and boarded fishmeal ships at sea.

Using certification paperwork, possession data, commerce information, audits and authorities lists of licensed fishing ships, the reporting crew was in a position to join ships to the crops they equipped and pin down which species have been being focused for fishmeal. This allowed them to find out which fishmeal crops have been linked to ships engaged in unlawful or unsustainable fishing. Then, they traced the fishmeal to the fish farm and to the place the seafood was bought by retailers.

The investigation discovered that greater than 2,400 ships tied to fishmeal manufacturing, working within the waters of no less than 30 nations. It discovered that the majority of these ships don’t absolutely adjust to the Global Charter for Fisheries Transparency, a information created by main ocean-focused civil society teams detailing accountability requirements for industrial fishing fleets.

For instance, lower than 30% of the fleets had publicly obtainable location info, and fewer than 25% had a novel vessel identification quantity. Such opacity makes the ships troublesome to police.

At least half of the species landed by the assessed fishmeal vessels are categorized by scientific research as “overexploited” or worse. Most of those vessels are purse seiners or trawlers, which deploy huge nets to seize dense faculties of fish. Both gear sorts are related to excessive ranges of waste, routinely hauling in giant volumes of non-target species.

At least 165 of the ships have been backside trawlers, a very harmful type of fishing that makes use of weighted nets that scrape the ocean ground, destroying nearly all the pieces of their path.

Concerns about aquaculture lengthen far past the destiny of the oceans. In Gambia and Mauritania in western Africa, the {industry} drives meals insecurity as fish that after sustained native communities are diverted into fishmeal factories.

In distant islands in Russia’s far east and in China’s Xinjiang area, the reporting detailed using pressured labor on ships, farms and in factories. In different nations, together with India and Peru, this {industry} was tied to no less than 80 incidents of civil unrest, some violent, often within the type of labor strikes and protests sparked by the water air pollution or the stink from factories cooking tons of decomposing fish.

In Chile in 2024, a number of hundred demonstrators burned tires and blocked coastal highways and railway tracks to protest the early closure of the fishing season, a transfer partly pushed by overfishing tied to fishmeal.

In Senegal, fishmeal has put native fishers out of labor, in order that they more and more are promoting — or repurposing — their boats to ferry migrants to Spain’s Canary Islands, a stepping stone to Europe. This perilous journey of roughly 930 miles claimed greater than 3,000 lives in 2025.

“We’re fishermen, however there’s no fish left right here, so we left,” stated Cheikhou Omar, a 21-year-old fisherman in 2024 as he sat on a seaside in Senegal, rescued after the fishing boat he tried to sail to Spain capsized, killing 30.

The fishmeal {industry} additionally contributes to transnational tensions. For instance, in 2021, a dozen Turkish backside trawlers fishing illegally within the Aegean Sea tried to ram a Greek analysis vessel when the scientists started filming their exercise.

In 2018, riots broke out in Saint-Louis, Senegal, after a fisher was shot and killed by Mauritanian coast guards, throughout what the Mauritanians stated was a cross-border raid by a fishmeal boat.

The politics of protein

In her 2021 guide “The Fishmeal Revolution,” Kristin A. Wintersteen traces how the Humboldt Current — a chilly, nutrient-rich upwelling system alongside the Pacific coast of South America — was reimagined as a protein mine. That shift, she argues, turned Peru right into a fishmeal superpower, chargeable for roughly 1 / 4 of worldwide manufacturing.

Fishmeal helped gas the post-World War II growth of commercial rooster and hog farming, significantly in Europe and the United States. Since then, this mannequin has unfold worldwide.

The feed {industry} has emphasised that it’s lowering its reliance on fishmeal and fish oil — and particularly using complete fish or fish elements that may be eaten by individuals. However, as aquaculture grows, world fishmeal manufacturing is predicted to rise by practically 10% by 2032, based on the Food and Agriculture Organization, a United Nations company.

For instance, 5 of the planet’s largest salmon corporations elevated their use of fishmeal and fish oil produced from complete wild fish by as a lot as 39% between 2020 and 2024, based on a report from the Farm Animal Investment Risk and Return Initiative.

Asked about sustainability considerations tied to her {industry}, Véronique Jamin, a spokesperson for IFFO, the overseas fishmeal affiliation, stated that fish farming is “probably the most environment friendly animal protein system.” She added that her group’s “position is to not advise which trading floors ought to use fishmeal and fish oil.” Attempts to make the {industry} extra sustainable should think about market forces, she stated, and seafood corporations have to reply to “what individuals really wish to purchase and eat.”

Efforts to maneuver away from fishmeal and fish oil have struggled. Researchers have recognized potential alternate options — together with seaweed, cassava waste, single-cell proteins produced by fungi and even sewage.

But none are being produced affordably at scale, and the alternate options typically lack the vitamins that assist the expansion of farmed fish.

The position of pressured labor

For these toiling at fishmeal crops and fish farms, the work and circumstances will be brutal, the investigation discovered.

In Russia, fish processing employees have been held captive in secluded firm cities or caught on ships removed from shore. “People have nowhere to go, no cash,” one employee informed President Vladimir Putin, who participated in a call-in tv present concerning the fishmeal plant in 2016. A second employee pleaded: “Please, assist us.”

In China, the aquaculture {industry} is increasing quickly within the nation’s mountainous and desert areas inland, significantly in Tibet and Xinjiang, two areas recognized for political repression, with legal penalties for talking native languages or practising spiritual or cultural traditions.

Because the U.S. authorities discovered human rights abuses to be pervasive there, Congress enacted a legislation in 2021 that banned all items produced “wholly or partially” by employees in Xinjiang or by ethnic minorities from the area on the presumption that they have been made with state-sponsored pressured labor. No such legislation exists for Tibet.

The investigation mapped greater than 1,000 fish farms in Xinjiang and Tibet that produce an estimated half-billion {dollars}’ price of seafood yearly, a lot of it exported to greater than a dozen nations, together with the United States. Despite the 2021 legislation banning items from Xinjiang, the investigation discovered that farm-raised fish from that area have reached the United States.

For instance, the Xinjiang Tiayun fish farm, which produces 40% of China’s domestically produced salmon, is tied by means of provide agreements to a model of seafood known as Aqua Star bought by Walmart and the planet’s largest meals service firm, Sysco, which within the U.S. distributes to public faculties, army bases and congressional cafeterias.

Sysco stated it was unaware of the hyperlink to Xinjiang. “We maintain all suppliers throughout our world provide chain accountable” to uphold U.S., overseas and native legal guidelines, and Sysco suspends contracts when they don’t, stated Ramit Plushnick-Masti, an organization spokesperson. Aqua Star and Walmart didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Xinjiang Tianyun stated in a press release that claims of pressured labor “are utterly factually unfounded.” The Chinese authorities didn’t reply to a request for comment.

More than 80% of seafood eaten within the U.S. is imported, and 9% of that comes from China.

Another main provider of seafood to the U.S. is India, which produces roughly a 3rd of the shrimp that Americans eat, nearly all of it grown with fishmeal. The investigation discovered no less than 18 cases of civil unrest and no less than 20 instances of water or air air pollution tied to Indian fishmeal crops.

In November 2020, Indian authorities investigators discovered hidden bore holes the place the operator of the United Marine Products fishmeal plant in Goa had been covertly disposing of poisonous waste, thereby contaminating groundwater. The plant proprietor denied wrongdoing.

Shrimp bought by Sysco and at Kroger and Safeway is fed fishmeal from United Marine, based on Bait to Plate, an internet device that maps seafood provide chains. Kroger and Safeway’s guardian firm, Albertsons, didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Sustainable practices

Though issues with fish farming have arisen worldwide, for some nations, it aquaculture has been a boon.

In Bangladesh, aquaculture has pushed down the worth of fish. Even accounting for fishmeal and transportation to the U.S., the manufacturing of sure farmed fish, together with tilapia and Atlantic salmon, emits much less greenhouse gasoline per pound than beef or pork.

Harvesting bivalves, like clams, oysters, scallops and mussels, is very sustainable as a result of these species don’t require feed. This kind of aquaculture additionally has a low carbon footprint and the shells perform as a type of carbon seize, based on a 2020 paper by the scientific journal Nature Food.

In the United States, no less than 16 factories processed fishmeal as of 2025, alongside the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia, the Gulf Coast in Mississippi and Louisiana, and in California, Oregon and Alaska.

Most of those factories use inedible offcuts from fishing as a result of practically each U.S. state has outlawed the focusing on of complete fish for fishmeal. The factories additionally are typically higher regulated than crops elsewhere within the planet.

Long provide chains

As the manufacturing of seafood has turn out to be extra globalized, its provide chains have stretched longer, making it more durable for customers and grocers to know whether or not it was harvested sustainably or legally.

Robert Okay. Stumberg, professor at Georgetown Law and supply-chain professional, stated grocers sometimes purchase from wholesalers and barely monitor their suppliers. One different purpose could also be believable deniability, he added. “Companies can escape blame or the necessity to repair issues in the event that they’re unaware of them.”

With authorities oversight of provide chains generally missing, industry-led certification packages have sought to fill the hole and root out unsustainable, unethical or unlawful practices.

But critics say these packages usually concentrate on environmental crimes and overlook labor abuses on ships. On land, at processing crops or farms, certification packages not often conduct true spot checks to authenticate the reassurances given by managers, stated Allie Brudney, a senior employees legal professional at Corporate Accountability Lab, a strategic litigation nonprofit.

Instead, the packages ceaselessly alert corporations earlier than inspectors present up. At sea, these packages typically depend on self-reported info from ship captains somewhat than having auditors examine vessels offshore.

Devan Meserve, a spokesperson for the Global Seafood Alliance, which runs the Best Aquaculture Practices program, defended the worth of such inspection packages. She said that her group represents the “most complete program for farmed seafood,” partly as a result of it covers the “whole aquaculture manufacturing chain.”

Protecting employees on the fishing vessels that offer feed mills is, nonetheless, an “immense problem,” Meserve added, as a result of audits happen at port. She added that her group helps the {industry} counter unlawful and overfishing by requiring feed mills to supply many of the fish they use in fishmeal or fish oil from fisheries accredited by certification packages like Marine Trust and Marine Stewardship Council.

The threat of false promoting

“Any accounting of the true influence of aquaculture has to begin not with the farm, however with the feed,” stated Daniel Pauly, challenge director of the Sea Around Us initiative on the University of British Columbia. “And that type of accounting affords a really completely different image than the {industry} affords.”

Since 2020, no less than 9 lawsuits alleging false promoting have been introduced in opposition to six seafood corporations in six U.S. states. Plaintiffs challenged language akin to “sustainable,” “eco-friendly” and “wild-caught,” in addition to claims of superior worker-safety requirements. Five of the lawsuits resulted in settlements, and the businesses paid the plaintiffs greater than $2 million.

In no less than 4 instances, using fishmeal or fish oil and their hyperlink to industrial fishing and ecosystem depletion have been central to arguments that the merchandise weren’t environmentally sustainable. Additional allegations included pressured labor on fishing vessels and reliance on dangerous pesticides and antibiotics.

The Outlaw Ocean investigation assessed greater than 500 seafood corporations that made advertising and marketing claims that have been akin to — or stronger than — these cited within the lawsuits. Over half of these corporations had provide chain ties to fishmeal producers concerned in crimes, misconduct and unsustainable fishing practices.

Dana Cleaveley, a analysis guide previously with SeaAlternative, a Canadian sustainable-seafood group, stated that many industries have already needed to start reckoning with the human rights and environmental abuses buried of their provide chains. She cited “sweatshop clothes,” “fair-trade espresso” and “blood diamonds” as examples.

Seafood has been slower to face such scrutiny, although, because the planet leans additional into aquaculture, that will change, she stated, significantly if extra governments start proscribing imports tied to illegality or unsustainable practices. She added: “That’s when traders will start to see materials, not simply reputational threat, and corporations should modify.”

But in some quarters, the troubling prices of fish farming stay unaddressed.

In April 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14276, “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness,” which instructed authorities officers to scale back regulatory burdens and enhance the industrial fishing and aquaculture sectors within the United States.

It made no point out of feed or fishmeal.

Urbina is government editor of the Outlaw Ocean Project. The reporting for this story was half of a bigger investigation performed by an overseas team of journalists primarily based on the Outlaw Ocean Project.