The Center for Food Safety (CFS) just took a major step in its lawsuit to stop dangerous factory fish farms from destroying our oceans. If this is successful, it will shut down construction of dangerous aquaculture mega-farms that cram thousands of fish into cages that are housed in the open ocean, releasing chemicals, animal waste, antibiotics, and excess feed into nearby waters. This decimates wild fish populations and threaten endangered animals like sharks, whales, and sea turtles.
Despite this destruction, in early 2021, the government issued a nationwide permit that greenlit an explosion of factory fish farm construction in ocean waters across the country.
Like factory farms on land, industrial aquaculture facilities pump massive amounts of antibiotics, pesticides, and other veterinary drugs into their captive animals to keep them alive in horrifying conditions. But these deadly chemicals leach into the ocean, contaminating nearby water and marine life. Up to 75% of antibiotics used by the industrial ocean fish farming industry are directly absorbed into the surrounding environment!
Even worse, MILLIONS of fish escape every year. In 2017, nearly 300,000 farmed Atlantic salmon escaped from a single aquaculture facility into Puget Sound in Washington. Long after, these non-native fish continue to swim free, even hundreds of miles away! In November 2022, this disaster prompted Washington’s Department of Natural Resources to order a phase-out of marine finfish aquaculture for non-native species in the state.
The CFS team represents conservation, tribal, and fishing organizations free of charge. We now have a chance to stop construction in federal ocean waters nationwide.
After a four year battle, in 2020, CFS won a groundbreaking lawsuit that protected federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico from polluting aquaculture facilities. The administration then issued new national permits through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, opening the floodgates to new facilities in federal ocean waters nationwide.
Please support the Center for Food Safety to help stop fish factory farms from polluting the oceans and decimating wild fish stocks.