‘Off The Hook’? – Feedback’s Response to Wagamama’s Feeble Answers on Farmed Salmon

After maintaining a stony silence in response to our campaigning for almost a year, Wagamama have finally revealed that they will be removing Norwegian farmed salmon from their menu, but the battle isn’t over yet. 

Last month, Wildlife TV Presenter & Conservationist Chris Packham joined the public call for Wagamama to drop farmed salmon from its menu because of its outsize environmental and social footprint. His support provided a welcome boost to our campaign and associated petition, which a staggering 100,000 people have now signed. 

This gained widespread media attention from  The National, Seafood Source, IntraFish, The Fish Site and others. As a result, Wagamama finally responded to our concerns after almost a year of silence, revealing to The National that they will be removing Norwegian salmon from their menu and replacing it with Scottish farmed salmon. 

We are glad to hear that Wagamama is distancing itself from the Norwegian salmon farming industry, which is known to be contributing to a food crisis in West Africa by sourcing fish oil —a key ingredient used to make aquafeed— from the region. However, Wagamama’s move to Scottish salmon does nothing to address the huge and systemic problems within the toxic salmon farming industry as a whole. That’s why we’re not letting them off the hook.

What’s the issue with farmed salmon? 

For decades the salmon industry has succeeded in marketing itself as a clean, environmentally friendly protein. However, this is far from the reality.  

From hazardous pesticides and fish faeces flowing from salmon farms into the surrounding marine ecosystems, to mass fish die offs due to overcrowding and disease, and threats to wild fish populations from sea lice parasites, the toxic farmed salmon industry has huge environmental and welfare issues.  

But it doesn’t end there.  

The industry’s appetite for millions of tonnes of wild fish to feed farmed salmon, in the form of fish meal and fish oil (FMFO), is harming communities around the world. Much of this wild fish comes from the Global South, in places like Mauritania, Southeast Asia and Peru. This extractive business model creates a problem: fish that are a vital source of food and income for coastal communities are instead being used to feed salmon consumed by the Global North. It’s a hugely inefficient and unjust use of nutritious fish, which could be eaten directly by people. 

How did Wagamama respond and what do we make of it?  

With Wagamama in the spotlight following widespread news coverage last month, a company spokesperson finally responded to our concerns in The National in July. This followed months of attempts to elicit a reaction from Wagamama through letters and a visit to its HQ in Central London.  

The main take-home from Wagamama’s response was: 

• Their Norwegian and Scottish salmon suppliers do not use feed from West Africa. 

• By the end of 2024, they will only use Scottish salmon from RSPCA-approved sites. 

• The FMFO fisheries that are used by salmon farming companies Wagamama buys from are accredited by GlobalGAP, the world’s leading standard for seafood farmed with care 

However, these responses leave a lot of questions unanswered. In light of this, we have sent them a letter outlining our ongoing concerns and a continued invitation to engage with us on this issue. You can find a copy of that letter here. 

When it comes to Wagamama’s claim that none of their suppliers use feed from West Africa, we have asked for evidence of the companies they have been sourcing from.  In our Blue Empire Report we found that the four big feed producers, MOWI, Skretting, Cargill and BioMar supply close to 100% of the feed used in Norwegian salmon farming. All of them source fish oil from West Africa. A recent investigation from the Financial Times even shows satellite footage of an oil tanker leaving West Africa and docking in Norway at a MOWI feed factory.1 So, it seems unlikely that Wagamama have separated themselves entirely from this complicated supply chain 

Turning our attention to Scottish sites, according to industry body Salmon Scotland, they do not use feed sourced from West African fisheries. We questions whether this is in fact the case as feed supply chains are so complex, and there is very little transparency for consumers and independent observers such as Feedback to interrogate these kinds of claims. However, putting this aside, using wild fish to feed farmed fish remains deeply inefficient and damaging.  Annually one-fifth of total marine catch is used to create FMFO, the bulk of which goes towards creating feed for the aquaculture industry. These fish, over 90% of which are overfished or at their maximum sustainable limit, are otherwise edible or could remain in the ocean to perform an important role in the marine ecosystem. So, regardless of whether Wagamama is using FMFO from West Africa, it is still contributing to this extractive and wasteful supply chain. For example, in some instances wild fish is being caught in Norway to feed farmed salmon, which is still contributing to extinction and loss of livelihoods in local communities in Scandinavia.  

Wagamama’s promise to move to RSPCA-approved Scottish salmon by the end of 2024, is hardly an achievement. The vast majority of Scottish salmon farming is RSPCA-approved, yet there are many welfare and wider issues still endemic to Scottish salmon farming. As set out by WildFish in its report, Responsibly Farmed?,  the RSPCA Assured standard, which claims to be welfare-led, sets no maximum mortality threshold limit; despite mortality being a recognised indicator for welfare performance. Consequently, Scottish farms reporting as many as 74% of its fish dying in a single month are still covered by the RSPCA Assured scheme.  Very high disease and mortality rates are raising wide concerns that certification schemes are failing to ensure salmon farms meet minimum standards that the public would expect from these schemes.  

Back in October last year we brought Wagamama’s attention to the issues with using GlobalGAP in their sourcing standards. It is therefore ironic that Wagamama are now pointing to it to demonstrate Wagamama is adhering to high standards is problematic. Like many other voluntary standards, GlobalGAP fails to address the ‘food-feed’ competition. This standard currently only requires 60% of soy and FMFO contained within certified feed to be from approved ‘sustainable’ sources, opening the door to outright harmful supply chains. Recording the origin of FMFO is only required ‘where possible’, allowing for untraceable and damaging sourcing. Further, any contribution to overall demand for FMFO (regardless of certification) where total demand already outstrips what can be sustainably supplied, contributes to overfishing and food insecurity. 

So, are they off the hook? 

In a word, no.  

On the one hand, it sounds like they’ve listened by moving away from Norwegian farmed salmon. But sadly, Scottish companies (some of which, like MOWI, are Norwegian-owned anyway) appear to be no better than their Norwegian counterparts when it comes to mass mortalities, wasteful feeding practices and the over-reliance on flawed certifications. 

There is still a long way to go before Wagamama are ‘off the hook’. 

Haven’t signed the petition yet? You can sign here.