Patagonia, a distributor of personal outdoor gear and clothing, has released a video that tries to paint dark colors on Iceland’s salmon farming industry, in the hope that consumers will be shocked and government will ban the industry.
The central message of the video is that farmed salmon, especially those in sea-based pens, pose an existential threat to wild salmon. The threat – very real and in the industry view exaggerated – comes from the possibility that escapements will allow farmed and wild salmon to mingle and breed, leading to new generations of feeble-brain salmonids that won’t be able to find their own breeding ground and in any case will have inferior-tasting meat sold at low prices in supermarkets, wiping out wild salmon with a double blow.
The video is co-produced by a pair of musicians who also led a protest against salmon farming last year in Reykjavik, and also features the land commissioner of the U.S. state of Washington who proposed a controversial ban in that state on salmon farming, an action opposed by salmon companies and Native American tribes. Patagonia had previously released a video about salmon farming in Puget Sound, Washington, with the same basic points about the industry and its product’s alleged environmental threats.
Patagonia’s actions have gotten the desired attention of consumers of fish and of mountain-climbing backpacks, and from Iceland government officials. The Icelandic National Audit Office has said that the extraordinary growth of the salmon farming sector suggests the sector might need greater oversight.