Cooke Chile boss echoes calls for better fish farming regulation
Not even those who created them understand them, says Parodi
Published
Andrés Parodi, the chief executive of salmon farmer Cooke Aquaculture Chile, has added his voice to high-level criticism of legislation affecting the country’s aquaculture industry.
These include the Lafkenche Law which is being used by some small indigenous communities to attempt to win control of thousands of hectares of coastal waters where salmon farming takes place.
A new General Law on Aquaculture that may impact the sector is also being debated by politicians, and former Chilean president Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle has warned that the sector might be destroyed if Congress passes a bad law.
Frei, whose presidency from 1994 to 2000 was notable in making improvements in health and education as well as reducing poverty, told a recent summit that rather than being restricted, salmon farming needs support to double in size over the next 30 years.
Regulatory certainty
Arturo Clément, head of sector trade body SalmonChile, has also warned that the sector needs regulatory certainty from the government in Santiago if it is to grow responsibly.
“There is a lack of understanding of the value of our industry, there is disregard for people from the south and we are being suffocated by the competition,” said Clément.
Cooke Chile CEO Parodi stated on social media that “the regulations must be rigorous, but simple to administer and apply. Today, they prevent us from moving forward and not even those who created them understand them”.
A State perspective
In response to Frei’s statements, Parodi told news outlet El Mercurio: “It is very difficult not to agree with a personality of the level of the former president who, with a State perspective, warns of the need to support the development and strengthening of the salmon farming industry as one of the strategic axes of the economy and employment in the southern and austral zone.
“In this sense, we highlight the focus that the former president puts on the solution of bureaucracy, on the need to promote new investments and to value in all its dimensions the contribution of the salmon farming industry.”
He added: “We also highlight the former president’s call to imitate successful regulatory cases, as developed countries do, which strongly support and back their salmon farming industry.”
Force for growth
Former president Frei was speaking at the Salmon Summit 2024, which was held last week at a theatre in Frutillar, a city in Los Lagos region, and attracted 1,200 people.
He said: “The salmon industry has been the driving force of growth in southern Chile over the last 30 years, without receiving any subsidy from the State. This has been built by the region, by businessmen, workers, institutions, among others, but without a penny from the State. And are we going to stop it, are we going to complicate it?
“Salmon farming needs to double over the next 30 years and is capable of doing so. It has the people and the investments to do so.”
At the end of his speech, Frei asked the actors in the salmon farming industry to be active participants in the discussion of the new General Law on Aquaculture, pointing out that “we cannot accept that this is destroyed with a bad Aquaculture Law”.
