What’s on your plate?
Farmed salmon has become one of the most popular dishes in restaurants and at home, but its popularity has come at a cost for the marine environment, unacceptably poor fish welfare and the health of the economy.
Join the citizen’s movement to know more about how your food is raised. What are you serving your family? Ask questions about the salmon on your plate at restaurants in Maine.
Questions you should ask
- Is your salmon wild-caught or grown in concentrated open-net pens?
- Does the producer use food color additives to make the farmed salmon pink?
- Was your farmed salmon raised in a sea lice net pen in the ocean?
- What antibiotics and chemicals do Maine regulators allow in the growing and harvesting process?
Get the facts
Salmon farms have huge environmental, sustainability and unacceptably poor fish welfare issues.
Impact on the environment
Open-net salmon farms are breeding grounds for parasites and disease; farms also discharge toxic chemicals and waste into the surrounding environment, impacting and killing a host of wildlife and potentially killing lobster larvae.
Find out more about the environmental issues.
Undeniably unsustainable
Open net salmon farms can compromise the integrity of the marine and freshwater ecosystems.
Find out more about the sustainability issues.
Unacceptably poor fish welfare
A national conservation group has taken aim at Maine’s finfish producer – Cooke Aquaculture – citing “Waste from the densely packed salmon forms a thick layer of toxic sediment on the ocean floor. The salmon foster disease and harbor parasites, and they escape and interbreed with endangered wild salmon”.
Stay up-to-date
Find out more about the latest news related to the campaign on the Protect Maine website.
In Maine, farm-raised salmon are grown in crowded cages ridden with diseases and parasites like sea lice.
Conservation Law Foundation
Time is up for Maine open net salmon farming
The salmon farming industry is fundamentally unsustainable and wreaks havoc on ecosystems around the world.
It’s time to end it.
