Organic salmon farming: risk perceptions, decision heuristics and the absence of environmental accounting

Abstract

This paper reports on interviews with salmon farmers exploring their decision as to whether to adopt organic production methods. Organic salmon farming has the potential to considerably reduce the social, environmental and economic risks associated with salmon farming. Salmon farming is an industry subjected to intense scrutiny and is highly controversial. The combination of these two factors was expected to reveal the use of environmental accounting in evaluating this potentially difficult, expensive strategic decision, responding to the barrage of public criticism, driven by changing environmental regulations and a potential value shift by key actors.

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the valuable support of the Carnegie Trust in funding this research project, participants at the APIRA conference, Singapore, 2004 and the extremely helpful and insightful comments from the two anonymous reviewers.

Notes

1 Salmon Farming includes, hatcheries, smolt production, on-growing of smolts in sea-water, processing (including smoking), packing and marketing (see, for example, Laird et al., 1988; Mills, 1989; FRS, 2001).

2 They have emerged from disciplines such as cultural anthropology, philosophy, sociology, social history, cultural geography and science and technology studies (Lupton, 1999, pp. 24). These perspectives can be categorised in three major groups: cultural/symbolic (see, for example, Adams, 1995; Douglas et al., 1985, 1992; Rayner, 1992; Schwartz et al., 1990; Thompson, Ellis, & Wildavsky, 1990); risk society (see, for example, Beck, 1992; Beck, Giddens, & Lash, 1994); and governmentality (see, for example, Foucault, 1991). A classification of the “risk” approaches can be found in Renn (1992).

3 The literature on GM food is extensive and falls outside the scope of this paper. For example, see Bruce and Tait (2003), Campbell and Fitzgerald (2002), Fitzgerald, Campbell, and Sivak (2002), Smith (2003), and Tait and Chataway (2003).

4 It was not possible to reliably measure organic salmon production as a percentage of total Scottish production, due to confidentiality clauses on supermarket contracts, including volumes sold.

5 Due to the sensitivity of this sector, it has been necessary to disguise the names of the companies that participated in this study. For a description of the cases presented in this paper see Section 5.

6 The label Scottish becomes extremely problematic to defend given the ownership of actual farms/companies by Norwegian Corporations. Scottish is used to define the actual location of the farms rather than ownership structure as in the case of environmental damage geographical location is critically important.

7 Details of the survey and initial analysis are available on request from the authors.

8 These terms relate to the volume and rate of water flowing through the marine location where the sea-cages are located.