Richard Flanagan’s exposé of the salmon farming industry in Tasmania is chilling. In the way that Rachel Carson took on the pesticide industry in her ground-breaking book Silent Spring, Flanagan tears open an industry that is as secretive as its practices are destructive and its product disturbing.

“If we purchase the commodity, we participate in the crime”

“They have destroyed what we loved. They have stolen our water, our serenity, and our beuaty. They are killing our channel, one of the tasmanias most beloved and iconic waterways, and worse itc creatures. Unless checked, they will destroy so much more of what i unique and offers Tasmanias a future in the 21st century”

“The pervasity is staggering. If a bushwalker intentiaonlly lit a fite in a tasnamnian national park… they would risk up to 21 years in jail as an arsonist. So how can itbe that when a salmon corporation similarly destroys unique, public owned waterss, it is rewarded with ore publicly owned waters to destroy? How can it be that it can destroy world heritage areas- as it has in macquaire harbour- without consequences ?”

“Take the extremlyy rare red handfish. Its close releative, the smooth handfish, was officially declared exitinct in 2020, the first fish species anywehre in the world in modern history to be declared so. Like the smooth handdish, the red handfish is unique, ancient and only found in the shallow coaastal waters of south-east tamania. Critically endangered, it is another extroadinary creature for which tasmanias is a final refuge….At the beginning of 2021, to number no more than eighty fish

“The majority of the animal protien used in tasnmanian salmon feed is chicken based….Chicken meal, was legally defined in 2015 as ‘prepared from.. the carcass of slaughtered poutly, such as heads,feet, intestines and frames’

“Tasmanian salmons omega 3 oils- the main nutritonal argument for eating it- are only obtainable from the fishmeal and fish oil the salmon eat. As the propertion of wilf fish detivative they

were fed decreased, so too did the level of omega-3 oils in the salmon decrease by between 30 and 50 percent”

“The water in which salmon are condemned to the most wretched of their lives is a soup of shit and ammonia and urea. Aggresision is common, with hueraches unable to be established, and cannibalism not unknown”

Due to genetic engineering //”the fish that results- known as a triploid- is prone to….oversized lower jaws, to spinal problems so bad they affect swimming, to heart deformties, to catarcts and reduced gill surfaces.

Tassal is given WWF symbol so it can use them on its prodducts “Tassal paid WWF $250,000 for ‘services and conservation projects’. The WWF endorsement of tassal was used by criminoogist Paul Bleakley in 2019 as an example ‘of a corrupt corporate arrangemebt that is designed purposefully to mislead consumers’