Staunch follow-up to NYT article on Chilean antibiotics use
USA: Last winter the New York Times printed an article about the Chilean salmon farming industry's struggles with ISA (Infectious Salmon Anemia). The article raised serious questions about Chilean aquaculture practices in general and its handling of ISA in particular.
A key source for the March 27, 2008, article was Dr. Felipe Cabello, a New York Medical College microbiologist. The story and his comments forced the Chilean salmon producers as well as government representatives on the defensive. US supermarket chains announced that they would reduce or stop selling Chilean farmed salmon.
Later in the spring the NYT partially retracted its article because they had referenced a less credible source, a security guard, who claimed to have seen bags of fish food containing antibiotics at one of the major salmon growers.
According to an article in The Patagonia Times online, Dr. Cabello now insists that despite the disputed NYT article, the Chilean industry is using far more antibiotics in its salmon production than the world's largest farmed salmon producing country, Norway. He is making his case in a letter to the Chilean Congressman Pablo Galilea Carrilo, president of the Chamber of Deputies' Fishing and Aquaculture Committee.
In 2003, according to Dr. Cabello, Chilean salmon farmers used 134,163 kilograms of antibiotics to produce about 280,500 tons of salmon, or an average of 478 grams per kilogram of salmon. In comparison, the same year Norwegian salmon farmers used 1.5 grams of antibiotics per kilogram salmon produced.
The controversy seems to continue and will probably do so until all aspects of the global salmon farming industry becomes more transparent.
