Government suggests reduced production
The Chilean government has suggested a new measure by which production volumes will be decided individually and voluntarily by each company.
After several months searching for a mechanism to change the sanitary regulations of the Chilean salmon industry, the Undersecretary of Fisheries met representatives of producers and SalmonChile last Monday, to present a proposal to amend the current regulation of farming densities, which should be operational until April 2016.
According to El Mercurio, at first it was thought that the State should intervene to regulate production through a group management system which allowed the industry to increase volumes as the consequence of good sanitary results and force them to reduce production if sanitary performance is unfavorable.
Although the current proposal pursues the same objective, the Government has decided to change the mechanism from a group plan to an individual one by which reduction plans should be individual and voluntary for each company, to avoid any possible infringement of free competition. Industry sources said that doing this voluntarily would not imply a disadvantage, since, given an adverse sanitary scenario, a company that increases production volumes should increase its number of cages too, which ultimately represents higher production costs.
Despite these advances in the regulation of farming densities, measures to address “speed bumps” and relocation of licenses were not discussed at Monday's meeting.
