translated from Spanish: Salmon Leaks: Sernapesca announces investigation and does not rule out legal action over Nova Austral manipulations

An investigation that could lead to legal action announced the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service after learning of El Mostrador’s complaint regarding the adulterations of Norwegian salmon salmon Nova Austral de salmon mortality statistics.
The Counter accessed reserved information, including emails from the production management of the Nova Austral salmon company to its area managers, which instructed them to manipulate the mortality statistics of the salmon present to the supervisory authority. The manoeuvre, which contrasts with the public image of a green and market-leading company for its sustainable innovations shown by Nova Austral, seeks to hide the true figures in order to avoid fines, and also to avoid the consequent loss of profits because of sanctions and discredit.
Upon being made aware by El Mostrador of the background, the Deputy Director of Aquaculture of Sernapesca, Marcela Lara, called the facts “very serious” and noted that “with the background provided we will immediately activate an investigation to corroborate the reported facts and determine the extent of these conducts and so in the event of proceeding, we will take all kinds of legal actions as soon as possible.”
According to the Deputy Director, the case “is an exceptional practice, no longer observed at present, that undermines transparency in the health and environmental field, a situation that the service has long committed to promoting together with the industry, in to move towards sustainable aquaculture.” Lara called these behaviors “bad practices of the past that, given the experiences of environmental and health, should be overcome.”
“We are not prepared to tolerate this behaviour by a company that jeopardizes the progress that has been made with the rest of the industry and so we will take appropriate legal action to punish those responsible,” he insisted.
Regarding Sernapesca’s ability to monitor these manipulations of Nova Austral, Marcela Lara was emphatically in noting that “a deliberate instruction to deceive the authority is not an easy thing to discover because it requires internal information from companies.”
In this regard, the regulations indicate that companies have an obligation to declare their mortality sit as established by the General Mortality Programme; Aquaculture Regulations (RESA) and the General Law on Aquaculture.
In the case of the complaint about Nova Austral, and consulted whether Sernapesca had any knowledge of this situation, the official stressed that “although we do not have a formal complaint about this point fact, we continually raised information in various ways, which allows us to develop the risk profiles of farmers. Based on these profiles, we design field audit campaigns and generate information analysis throughout the production period. Thus, to date we have campaigns in the area involved in this complaint, although this behavior has not been established.”
Regarding Sernapesca’s audit capabilities, the Deputy Director of Aquaculture argued that the entity “monitors them and their causes declared by the growing centres through our Information System for the control of aquaculture (SIFA), which is complemented by on-the-spot auditing that allows us to verify compliance with regulations and, in particular, the veracity of the information provided. In addition, the cross-section of information reported in the various stages of cultivation (fattening centres, plant, collection centres, among others) and that from the mandatory sampling carried out by virtue of the surveillance of diseases in the cultivation centres.”
There was also reaction in the political and environmental world.  “The company has to explain this situation with all the background on the table and maximum transparency. I will require the relevant authorities to hold an investigation in depth and immediately, because we can be faced with wrongdoing that is unacceptable,” the senator for Magellan, Carolina Goic, warned.
In Greenpeace, for their part, they condemned the “policy of deception” set up by the Norwegian company, while from National Geographic Pristine Seas they emphasized that “a company with these fraudulent practices should not have permission to operate in Chile”.

Original source in Spanish