In 2010, anthropologists Peter Benson and Stuart Kirsch created a new lens through which to consider the role of corporations in society – specifically the damage caused by some industries and the ways these corporations shape public and government responses to perpetuate their activities. They labelled these corporations as part of a “harm industry.”
In 2017, Dean Bavington and Reade Davis, both professors at Memorial University in Newfoundland, applied the “harm” hypothesis to the aquaculture industry in a report called “Industrial Aquaculture and the Politics of Resignation.” Among their findings was that the rapid expansion of open-net pen salmon farming in Canada and around the world has damaged the environment and contributed to food insecurity in low-income countries. Bavington and Reade compared the tactics used by the aquaculture industry to those used by the tobacco and fossil fuel industries, to conceal the damage caused by their products for decades. Studies have also demonstrated how regional fish stocks essential to food security and livelihoods in places like West Africa are threatened by the wasteful and expanding fishmeal and fish oil demands for salmon feed.
In an interview in 2020, Bavington described finfish farming as “a death producing industry.”
The same year the harm report was released, Greenpeace published a study showing how regional fish stocks essential to food security and livelihoods in West Africa are under threat from the wasteful and expanding fishmeal and fish oil (FMFO) industry, and called on all West African governments to phase out the industry, stating:
“The ocean is essential to life itself, providing the air we breathe, the food we eat and regulating our global climate. Food from the ocean is eaten by billions of people around the world, and is critical in West Africa. In Senegal, fish is around 70% of the animal protein consumed, and in The Gambia it’s over half. But the fish on which these coastal countries and the sub-region depend is being diverted from the local food supply to factories, where it is turned into fishmeal and fish oil for export. Rather than feeding local people, West Africa’s fish is increasingly nourishing the fish farms and feedlots of other countries.”