Senator commission proposes aquaculture infraction crackdown
Chile’s aquaculture industry has reason for concern regarding the nation’s political arena. First, the newly elected president of the Senate Commission of Fisheries is none other than Senator Camilo Escalona, the writer of the salmon royalty law proposed in March of 2007. Second, two more senators within the commission (Senators Antonio Horvath and Baldo Prokurica) recently proposed an initiative to apply serious fines to either aquaculture companies or third party service and supply providers, which may be responsible for the transmission diseases affecting hydrobiological species. According to Aqua.cl, the proposal intends to modify the current General Fisheries and Aquaculture law by defining degrees of severity to the various infractions pertaining to the law, which will also have a coinciding severity of penalty. The degrees of severity of most concern for aquaculture industry are those defined as “serious” and “very serious”. “Serious” infractions refer to the non-disclosure of information regarding the known presence of a high-risk disease in an area, resulting in a fine from US$ 8,000 to US$ 115,000. “Very serious” infractions would include the direct transmission of high-risk disease, and putting in jeopardy the sanitary protection of species across a large area. These infractions would cost anywhere from US$ 77,000 to US$ 231,000.
