Faroese salmon farming company buys own plane, to fly its fish to the US
The salmon farming industry is hugely environmentally damaging, due to the food fed to the fish, the spread of fish parasites like sea lice to wild salmon, the pollution of the sea under the salmon cages, and much more. But the industry makes money. Currently Scottish salmon is flown to Heathrow, and then flown around the world, eg. to the US. They also farm salmon in the Faroe Islands (the islands where they annually slaughter dolphins) and export this to the US. Now one company has bought its own Boeing 757 plane, in order to fly its fish direct to the US, avoiding Heathrow. It is claiming this reduces its carbon footprint … Air freighting farmed fish just combines some of the worst sorts of environmental harm, to nature and to the irreversible breakdown of the global climate system. Fish is often flown around the world. The industry is keen to increase this air freight, in order to open new markets overseas, to sell ever more. As well as salmon, tuna and lobster is often flown across the globe rather than being frozen or super-chilled for transport by ship. Live Canadian lobsters are flown to Shanghai, Chilean salmon to New York, and Norwegian salmon to Japan.
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Salmon firm’s plan to fly fish in its own Boeing 757 alarms campaigners
Faroese firm Bakkafrost claims direct flights to US will cut carbon but critics say air transport is not the answer
The Bakkafrost Boeing 757 will carry 35 tonnes of fresh salmon from the Faroe Isles to New Jersey in the US.
By Severin Carrell, Scotland editor (Guardian) @severincarrell
Tue 21 Jun 2022
A salmon farming company has bought a Boeing 757 in a race to get its fresh fish on to the plates of diners in Manhattan in less than 24 hours.
The Faroese firm Bakkafrost, which also owns the Scottish Salmon Company, argues it can cut its carbon footprint by flying its own jet across the Atlantic and minimise waste by getting its fish to its US customers faster.
But sustainability campaigners say its transatlantic flights raise new questions about the climate impact of the global seafood industry and its increasing reliance on air freight to open new markets overseas.
Fresh seafood such as salmon, tuna and lobster is often flown across the globe rather than being frozen or super-chilled for transport by ship. Campaigners calculate that flying salmon fillets from Scandinavia to the US produces 17 times more CO2 than travel by boat.
Bakkafrost’s 757 is being converted into a flying fridge capable of carrying 35 tonnes of fresh salmon, chilled to zero degrees, from the Faroe Isles, an archipelago midway between Scotland and Iceland, direct to an airport in New Jersey. Harvested that day, it would arrive in time to reach US wholesalers and restaurants early the next morning.
Bakkafrost plans to fly other freight back to the Faroes or Scottish airports to reduce operating costs and is considering extra flights to take Scottish salmon to New York.
Regin Jacobsen, Bakkafrost’s chief executive, said direct flights in a ready-chilled hold would cut the firm’s CO2 emissions from air freight by 45%. It currently flies salmon to the US via Heathrow, which increases the flying time and needs large amounts of ice to keep the fish cool.
Jacobsen said the strategy would help meet his firm’s pledge to cut its carbon emissions by 50% by 2030 and to net zero by 2050, in line with United Nations sustainable development goals. Air freight, he added, was only a small proportion of its overall exports. It shipped thousands of tonnes by sea every week.
“Reducing our carbon footprint to the US is a huge step and it’s very important our customers get high-quality produce,” he said. “By reducing transportation times, it means consumers in New York and the east coast have very fresh produce and reduced food waste.”
Bakkafrost’s strategy is controversial within the salmon farming industry. Its Faroese rival Hiddenfjord stopped all air freight in October 2020 and instead uses ships to reach US customers; the nine-day voyages have cut its carbon footprint by 94%, at a 10th of the price of flying.
Blake Lee-Harwood of the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership, which advises supermarkets on climate- and environment-friendly fisheries policies, said the firm should be pursuing the lowest-carbon technologies instead of simply cutting flying time.
Worldwide, air freight is increasingly used to sell and distribute premium seafood. Live Canadian lobsters are flown to Shanghai in China, Chilean salmon to New York, and Norwegian salmon flown to Japan. Industry studies calculate 18% of Norway’s fresh salmon is air freighted to customers, representing 50% of Norwegian salmon farming’s total carbon emissions.
“Climate change is an existential threat to the seafood industry and to global livelihoods. We think the seafood industry has to be part of the solution by demonstrating absolute best practice. That inevitably means a move away from air transport, certainly for farmed salmon,” Lee-Harwood said.
Kath Dalmeny, the chief executive of Sustain, which campaigns on food and farming, said: “We’re in a climate and nature emergency. Globally, the way we produce our food is responsible for up to 30% of emissions.
“Rather than finding ways to fly food even more quickly from one side of the world to the other, we should all be endeavouring to create a food system that nourishes the planet’s population and allows nature to recover.”
See earlier:
Scottish (environmentally damaging) salmon, farmed by non-British company, are main Heathrow air freight export by weight
An article in the Telegraph takes at face value the blurb put out by Heathrow on its air freight exports. As Heathrow and its backers never ever mention imports, people may be led to believe there are only exports and no imports going through Heathrow. The reality is very different. Heathrow’s figures show the total tonnage of exports in 2014 was 345,575 tonnes, out of the total of 1,501,906 tonnes. That is 23%. The other 77% by weight was imports. The value of exports via Heathrow in 2014 was £48 billion, out of a total for air freight of £101 billion. So the value of exports was 47.5%. Never mentioned by Heathrow. The Telegraph focuses on the exports of Scottish salmon by Heathrow. It is deeply odd, not to mention highly unsustainable, that Scottish fish are not exported from Scottish airports – and why they are flown to London, for their onward journey. It is also ironic because Scottish farmed salmon not only cause serious problems for the few remaining wild salmon, but also for the waters where the farms are located. And the farms are largely owned by foreign companies, so not British at all. The largest grower is the massive Marine Harvest Scotland, based in Norway. So Norwegian company damages Scottish environment, to ship fish by air to London, and then across the world. And Heathrow wants another runway so it can do more of this sort of thing. Weird world …
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BBC programme in October 2019 – Heathrow IMPORTS more salmon than it exports
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