Farmed Bluefin Tuna? Why Spain's Pilot Plant Is Bad News

A pilot plant built with an initial investment of around 7 million euros, with a floating tank with RAS technology (water recirculation system) for the production of 60 tons of fish per year. Even reading it like this, the sentence makes a certain impression because, in the crudeness of the exposition, it explains how today the production of food produced with live animals is a serial and mechanical fact . But in this case there is something more: the fish in question, in fact, is the red tuna, one of the most emblematic and at-risk species of our marine ecosystem.

The plant will be built in Castellón de la Plana, Spain, and will be the first in the world with a system that aims to close the entire life cycle of the species in captivity . The project is by the German company Next Tuna. The permit for the construction of the intensive breeding facility, the first of its kind in Europe, has arrived from the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries. And it could be just the beginning: in fact, if the test goes "well", a second project worth 70 million euros with 18 tanks and large-scale production is already ready.

Officially, the goal is to “promote research and development in marine aquaculture” but, say the associations that denounced the existence of the project, “in reality, as one can easily imagine, it is a highly unsustainable model that completely ignores the biology and well-being of these animals”.

“Bluefin tuna is a migratory predator ,” animal rights groups denounce, “that travels thousands of kilometers in the open sea. Locking it up in tanks is a sentence to a life of stress, suffering and deprivation.” Not to mention that bluefin tuna farming “requires enormous quantities of wild fish as feed: to “produce” a single tuna, up to 20 kilos of caught fish are sacrificed.” In practice, the associations say, we are in the presence of a project that takes precious resources from the oceans to fatten a few individuals destined for the luxury market. Furthermore, despite the RAS technology being promoted as “clean,” the environmental implications remain serious: use of energy, drugs, pollution and waste of resources.

While governments and companies promote these projects as solutions to overexploitation , they are actually perpetuating the same system that has led to the collapse of the oceans. As Essere Animali, which launched a petition against the project, points out, “it not only legitimises the intensive farming of an already threatened species, but it paves the way for the normalisation of unacceptable practices in the name of profit”. Finally, for the association, “it is particularly worrying that the project has received financial support through EU public funding programmes aimed at promoting sustainable development”.

Not long ago, activist Don Staniford, of the Scottish Salmon Watch association, denounced the terrible conditions in which salmon live (so to speak) in intensive farms in Scotland, where, in a 30-meter diameter tank, up to 100 thousand specimens can be locked up. Unsustainable living conditions for fish accustomed to having space and who find themselves compressed, almost without the possibility of swimming, creating the ideal conditions for the proliferation of diseases and parasites such as sea lice that literally eat salmon alive and the use of chemicals to combat them. A situation that could soon be repeated for red tuna.