Factory-farmed fish: Sick food and dead fjords

Let's open our eyes and see this cruelty for what it really is: The farmed fish is a shadow of its natural self, a deformed, nutrient-poor hybrid, not only swimming around in its own excrement, but also literally rotting, falling apart while still alive.

These are not fish as the human animal was meant to eat – these are industrially created Franken creatures, completely dependent on antibiotics and chemical additives and flushing with toxins to even keep it afloat just long enough to be slaughtered and served to you on a silver platter.

This is unnatural factory food that only pretends to be healthy. Because it is demonstrably not.

From wild predator to sickly factory product

Imagine a wild salmon, a raw, muscular predator that eats small fish and accumulates huge amounts of omega-3s, vitamin D and healthy nutrients. Then you have the farmed salmon, raised in a cage – a fat, weak and sickly pale version of its wild cousin.

The feed it receives is not the natural, protein-rich diet it was developed for, but a substitute filled with soy, canola oil, and other junk that removes what little is left of its natural nutritional profile.

Wild salmon, mackerel and cod are predatory fish that feed on small fish, crustaceans and other marine organisms. They are built for hunting, for movement, for strength. But then the fish farming industry comes in and is responsible for the ultimate castration: they take these predators and put them in cages, and on a completely absurd plant-based feed of soy, corn and rapeseed oil – food that could not be further from what they naturally need.

The result? A fish that loses its natural fat pattern, its muscle profile, its strength, its nutrients, and its lifeblood. Omega-3 levels drop, vitamins disappear, and instead of the health-giving powerhouse people think they are eating, they are eating sickly factory-processed food that no longer bears the signature of the ocean in any way.

The salmon is a very pale white color, and the "nice" red color you see in the store is due to added dyes - it's faked, to fool you. Did you know?

And you might have thought that smoked salmon was smoked? Did you know that it is most often "liquid smoke", that is, a nasty oil with a smoke flavor that the rotten, self-dead, gooey white salmon marinates in? Have you ever noticed how slippery smoked salmon has become these days?

Franconian food.

Farmed mackerel and cod – next on the victim list

So it wasn't enough to destroy the salmon – now it's the turn of the mackerel and cod. The mackerel, once a little energy bomb full of omega-3, vitamin D and marine proteins, is now being caged and fed the industry's toxic recipe. The mackerel was an extremely powerful and muscular predator, actually a barracuda, that shot around the fjords and became extremely nutritious because it was so strong, fast and hungry.

Then we put the poor thing in a cage, just like with the salmon.

It no longer tastes like real mackerel. It no longer contains the same nutrients – far from it. It is not even a shadow of its former self – it is a fraud, an industrial experiment, an outright counterfeit, just like the salmon.

And the cod? The king of the sea with his royal beard and all, the very backbone of the Norwegian fishing industry, is now being squeezed into the same systems. From a life in the freezing seas hunting for natural prey, it is now becoming an industrial production commodity, put in captivity and pressured to grow rapidly on an artificial diet.

Cod has always been a clean and natural source of protein, and almost the Norwegians' "main fish" and reason for survival in general - but what happens when we let the poor animal grow up in the factory machinery? It becomes a tasteless, sickly lump, without the nutrients that originally made it a superfood.

It is still absolutely true that "garbage in, garbage out".

If, for example, Mowi wonders why their fish are sick and falling apart, then they are idiots. But of course they are not. They are just cynical capitalists. If they can sell you this factory salmon, without feeding the animal, then of course they will. This is entirely in the spirit and nature of capitalism.

Just a different nature than we ordinary people want to be a part of.

Literally rotting alive

This is not an exaggeration – it is the reality of farmed fish. Sea lice eat them alive. Bacteria and disease abound. Deformities are the norm. The fish suffer from collapsed swim bladders, open wounds and cracked skin. They seem to fall apart alive.

And when the fish don't get the complete amino acids and fatty acids from their natural diet as the predator they are, it's no wonder they get sick. They can't actually live off soy – any more than a human can. Just keeping them in that little cage for their entire lives – it's really completely comparable to chicken farming. Just as cruel. Just as tragic. Maybe actually worse?

After all, the chickens don't kill the fjords while they suffer...

Researchers have also found a new toxin, tralopyril, in farmed salmonThis substance is used to impregnate fish farming cages, but can leach into the fish and pose a health risk.

En study from February 2025 also found that 99% of seafood samples tested contained microplastics, underscoring the widespread pollution in the seafood industry.

An ecological disaster

Because it doesn't stop with the fish, they are destroyed; we are destroying the entire ocean. The fish farms are bombs of pollution, where chemicals, excrement and parasites leak out and kill all life nearby.

Wild fish pay the ultimate price. Sea lice are spreading to wild stocks and wiping them out. Farmers are flushing their so-called fish with enormous amounts of hydrogen peroxide, but no one is helping the wild salmon, trout, and now also the lyre and saithe with all their lice, which have spread into the fjords only because of these 100% destructive factories.

The bacteria from the fish farms also kill crustaceans and other food for wild birds and fish, and the entire ecosystem, developed over millions of years, is destroyed. The fjords, once clean and fresh, and one of Norwegians' most important resources, have become swamps of death and decay.

We see it so clearly: Dead zones in the fjords. Wild fish on the verge of collapse, and salmon rivers that don't even open because we are in the process of eradicating some of the most wonderful food we had.

This is not a natural development – ​​it is a deliberate, calculated destruction of nature for profit. And the longer we let this happen, the harder it will be to reverse. It may already be too late for those of us alive now, at least.

The choice is simple – but urgent

Do you want to eat real fish? Then it's wild caught or nothing. It's up to us consumers, because the authorities are clearly screwing up on this from the far right to the far left.

It should be a given to stop the aquaculture industry from turning the ocean into a toxic dump of soy-fed mutant fish. We cannot let them exterminate wild fish, poison the fjords, and at the same time serve us a nutritionally empty fraud that weakens us bit by bit.

The human animal was not created to eat sick and unnutritious factory-produced fish. It was created to eat real, natural foodAnd if we don't stop this madness, future generations will never know what real fish really tastes like.

You know?

Should we eat farmed salmon?

Risk report Norwegian fish farming 2024

Norway rules out fish farm ban despite 'existential threat' to wild salmon

Report from the Institute of Marine Research 2023-6

MORE SOURCES

Photo: Shutterstock license

Anyone can comment by logging in with their Facebook or Google accounts.. Norwegian Carnivory is not health care. You must seek medical attention for medical problems.

Written 2025 © Norwegian Carnivory