Until now, Swedish consumers have been used to the salmon in grocery stores being mostly farmed in Norway. This fall, however, Norwegian salmon will be mixed with Swedish-farmed rainbow trout in the fish counter.
This is confirmed by Jussi Kosomaa, business director of the Finnish group Nordic Trout, which operates about ten food fish farms in Sweden.
Like the lion's share of Swedish-farmed rainbow trout, its fish has so far been exported, in this case to Finland.
Smaller volumes
Through an initial agreement with ICA, the fish will now instead be sold in Swedish grocery stores.
The Swedish market is overwhelmingly dominated by Norwegian salmon. Now we can take a significant share of the market, says Jussi Kosomaa.
One reason why the salmon in Swedish stores usually comes from Norway is that food fish farmers in Sweden often have not had large enough volumes to guarantee deliveries to the store chains all year round.
To strengthen the country's food security, the government has introduced legislative changes that will benefit Swedish food fish farming, which means, among other things, that the requirement for a farming permit in its current form will disappear.
Edvin Nestor, category area manager at ICA Sweden, confirms in an email response to TT that ICA stores will be able to purchase the products and make them available to customers starting this fall. The initiative “is well in line with the chain’s work to promote ASC-certified products produced in Sweden,” he states.
Fish food and escapes
Someone who does not welcome such an expansion is Inger Melander, a marine and fish expert at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
The fact that this company boasts several ASC-certified farms in Sweden (a certification program for responsible seafood farming) is not enough, she believes.
In our opinion, the ASC requirements are too low. The fish feed at food fish farms in both Sweden and Norway contains fish from the wild stock in the sea and contributes to overfishing in our seas. In the WWF consumer guide Fiskguiden, the warning light is yellow for all farms for char or rainbow trout in Sweden, due to, among other things, the fish feed and escapes. Earlier this summer, six tons of rainbow trout also escaped from one of Nordic Trout's farms in Siljan.
From a preparedness perspective, is Swedish-farmed rainbow trout better than Norwegian?
No. A Swedish mistake is no better than a Norwegian one, says Inger Melander.
In July of this year, new fishing legislation came into effect. Among other things, it means that the requirement for a cultivation permit in its current form will disappear.
Many aquaculture farms are therefore no longer covered by the detailed animal welfare requirements in the Swedish Board of Agriculture's regulations on fish farming. However, everyone who keeps fish in aquaculture is still covered by the Animal Welfare Act and the Animal Welfare Ordinance.
The most common way to grow food fish is in large or small net cages in a lake or on the coast. Fish farming in cages and in the sea can lead to eutrophication of the water.
In Sweden, around 10,000 tons of fish are farmed annually, in around 40 farms.
The most common farmed species are rainbow trout, brown trout and char.
Over 90 percent of the farmed fish eaten in Sweden is imported and a large part comes from Norway.
Sources: Swedish Board of Agriculture, SLU (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences), Food Fish Farmers and WWF.
