Class Action Alleges Ducktrap River of Maine Smoked Atlantic Salmon Falsely Advertised as ‘Sustainably Sourced,’ ‘All Natural’

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A proposed class action alleges Ducktrap River of Maine smoked Atlantic salmon has been falsely and misleadingly advertised and marketed as “sustainably sourced,” “all natural” and “sourced from Maine.”

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According to the 34-page complaint, defendants Mowi USA, LLC and processor Mowi Ducktrap, LLC have misled consumers with regard to not only the true environmental impact of sourcing the smoked salmon and whether the product is treated with artificial chemicals but also where the salmon actually comes from.

The lawsuit, filed by a Neversink, New York general store, alleges the defendants’ Ducktrap River of Maine smoked salmon is, in truth, “industrially farmed using unsustainable and environmentally unfriendly practices,” treated with “antibiotics and pesticides” and sourced from outside of the United States.

“In other words, Defendants’ marketing of the Products is false and misleading,” the case claims, arguing consumers have been misled into buying the smoked salmon under “false pretenses.” 

Mowi, through parent company Mowi ASA, is the world’s largest producer of farm-raised salmon, fulfilling one-fifth of the global demand for such, the lawsuit begins. As the suit tell it, however, Mowi’s representations of its farm-raised salmon, as seen on product labels and on social media, have obscured the truth about the product’s sourcing.

Unbeknownst to consumers, Mowi’s Ducktrap River of Maine smoked Atlantic salmon is sourced not from Maine or off the state’s coastline, but from industrial fish farms in Chile, Scotland, Iceland and Norway by way of “unsustainable and environmentally destructive practices,” the lawsuit claims. To feed the salmon it raises, Mowi, per the complaint, uses vast quantities of wild-caught fish, a practice the case says has been determined by experts to be unsustainable given salmon are carnivores and require “over a pound of wild fish for every pound of weight they gain.” 

Further, the lawsuit says the method used by Mowi to farm salmon, called “open net pen aquaculture,” which may see more than 70,000 salmon confined in a single pen, is “ecologically dangerous” and has been banned “in numerous jurisdictions due to concerns over environmental risks.” Per the case, “open net pen aquaculture” poses a significant threat to the greater marine environment on a number of levels.

“Because open net pens are directly connected to the broader marine environment, experts have concluded that diseases and escaped salmon may spread from the farms into the environment and that ‘risks of damage to wild salmon populations, ecosystems, and society are large,’” the case reads. 

From there, the lawsuit alleges Mowi’s standard business practices in sourcing and raising its salmon “inflict unnecessary suffering” on the fish, contravening the company’s sustainability claims. According to the complaint, the conditions at Mowi’s Scotland facilities have been rated by animal charity OneKing as “some of the industry’s worst,” due in no small part to “mortality rates, parasite infections, stress levels, overstocking, genetic deformities, and escapes, among other factors.” 

“Overall, Mowi has ranked second-worst out of eight farmed fish producers on animal welfare,” the suit says, noting the company has been reprimanded by the UK’s Animal and Plant Health Agency over its reported failure to protect lice-eating fish from “suffering [and] disease” at its Scotland farms. From the lawsuit:

“Indeed, between July and September 2019, approximately 737,000 salmon from 12 separate fish farms owned and operated by Mowi in Scotland were killed by algae blooms, poor health, and disease. In May 2020, 1.5 million juvenile salmon died in Mowi’s new hatchery in Northern Norway. 

The extremely crowded and unsanitary environment that the salmon are raised in is nothing like the natural environment in which the salmon would be raised in the wild.”

The complaint goes on to allege the “crowded and unsanitary conditions” at Mowi’s salmon farms are made possible by the company’s use of “a wide range of antimicrobial drugs” that may present a risk to both human health and the environment. Antibiotics in farming, the suit says, contribute to the emergence of antimicrobial resistance in bacteria that can be transferred to humans, which can interfere with the ability of antibiotic drugs to fight disease. 

According to the lawsuit, Mowi treats its salmon with the antibiotics florfenicol, oxytetracycline and sulfamerazine, all of which the World Health Organization (WHO) considers “highly important” for human medicine. Mowi’s salmon are also administered the sedative tricaine mesylate and the semi-synthetic insecticide emamectin benzoate, among other chemicals, the case claims, alleging the defendants have “repeatedly failed to report chemical use and the presence of dangerous pathogens” as required by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council Standards. 

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