SalmonChile speaks up regarding negative hype
César Barros, president of SalmonChile is the first to admit that the nation’s salmon association has been hit exceptionally hard since the first of the year. The barrage of bad press continues to kick Chile while it’s down, especially from the New Yorkers (see “Yet another swing at farmed Atlantic salmon by the New York Times, 13.06.08), and in a recent interview with El Mostrador his tone was defensive as usual. When asked which moment during his presidency has been the most difficult, Barros states, “It’s the accumulation of difficulties that has been hard. First it was the tsunami in Aysén when we were accused of the deaths of workers. Then came the ISA virus, which probably arrived via poor management and inspection of imported eggs from Norway or elsewhere. The ISA scandal provoked an exaggerated amount of negative propaganda and very poor management of public communications, not on our behalf, but from other sources. The icing on the cake has been the conflict with New York Times.” Regarding the negative propaganda campaigns from the NGO’s, in Barros’ opinion the World Wildlife Fund is the only existing NGO that is not blatantly anti-private enterprise. And as for the NGO campaigns regarding the salmon industry’s poor track record on labour issues Barros quips, “We [the salmon industry] are not the national leader in worker accident rates, but we are the leader in this zone as far as worker salaries. If you don’t believe me, go work in the dairy or forestry sector to see for yourself. Why do we have such high employment rates and why do workers stay? Because we pay well. And after the mining industry we have the highest rate of unionization.”
