Norwegian minister doubles down on need for salmon production cuts
Marianne Sivertsen Næss acknowledges impact of 'traffic light' designations but insists they were the best way to reduce lice pressure on wild smolts
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Norway fisheries minister Marianne Sivertsen Naess has defended production cuts made as part of the country’s salmon “traffic light” system designed to protect migrating wild smolts from lice from fish farms, reports Fish Farming Expert's Norwegian sister site, Kyst.no.
Naess said there were no other, less intrusive measures that could be implemented in the short and medium term that would have the same effect.
Norway’s coast is divided into 13 fish farming production areas (POs), and the perceived risk to wild fish from sea lice in those areas is assessed every two years. If a production area is given a red traffic light, all the farms in that area must reduce production by 6%. The assumption is that growing fewer salmon will also reduce the volume of sea lice.
Three red lights
In June, the production area between Karmøy and Øygarden (PO3) was given a red light for the third time in succession, meaning that fish farmers there have lost 18% of maximum allowed biomass since 2022.
Farmers in neighbouring PO4 (Nordhordland-Stadt) have also been marked down three times in a row, in 2020, 2022, and 2024. This year PO4 received a yellow traffic light, allowing production to stay at the 2024 level but not to increase.
Traffic light designations are influenced by a government-appointed steering group comprising one representative from each of three institutes: the Veterinary Institute (VI), the Institute of Marine Research (IMR) and the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA). Despite the cuts made in PO3 and PO4 in 2024, it announced it December last year that the impact of sea lice on wild salmon smolts was unchanged.
Naess (Labour Party) defended the traffic light system in a written response to Conservative MP Bård Ludvig Thorheim, who had asked the government to assess the economic consequences of reduced production capacity.
Thorheim referred to a report from research institute Nofima, which estimates that traffic light cuts have led to 2,000 fewer direct and indirect jobs, NOK 2.9 billion in lost value creation, and NOK 622 million in lost tax revenue.
Reduced production 'was the aim'
Naess acknowledged that cuts by the previous and current governments have had an impact on the production of fish in Western Norway but said that was actually the purpose of the cuts.
She insisted that reduced production capacity will result in fewer hosts for sea lice, thereby reducing the impact on wild salmon, and that no other approach would have the same impact in the required timeframe.
“It is my assessment that a reduction in production capacity in production area 3 could have a positive environmental effect in the longer term, and that there are no other and less intrusive measures that can be implemented in the short and medium term that would have the same effect,” wrote Naess.
Unquantified benefits
The minister pointed out that Nofima had calculated possible consequences for production, value creation, and employment, but that the report had not quantified the socio-economic benefits of reduced environmental impact.
She also said that the environmental flexibility scheme in the traffic light system, together with better utilisation of existing permits, may explain why the actual production reduction has been smaller than the cuts in isolation would indicate. The flexibility scheme enables farmers in red areas to use some of their suspended biomass allowance in floating closed containment systems.
Naess argued that the alternative of downsizing production in red areas would also have consequences.
“Absence of drawdown (production cuts) would also have an environmental cost, in that the situation for wild salmon in Western Norway would be worse than it is today,” she concluded.
