Cargill Aqua Nutrition

Background

With a revenue of $177 billion in 2023,¹ Cargill is one of the world’s largest agribusiness companies and the largest privately held company in the U.S.² Cargill’s operations include trading and production of agricultural products such as soy, palm oil, biofuels, and the manufacture of animal feeds, as well as cattle farming.³

Cargill has significant activities in the aquaculture sector through its subsidiary Cargill Aqua Nutrition (CQN), which was formed out of a merger with the Norwegian fish feed producer Ewos in 2015,⁴ and through its stake in Chilean salmon farmer Multi Export (Multi X). Over 60 percent of CQN’s feed is for salmon and trout.⁵

Through CQN, Cargill is one of four aquafeed companies – together with Mowi, Skretting, and Biomar – which control the majority of the salmon feed market.⁶

Between them, these four companies also supply almost all the feed to Norway, the world’s biggest producer of farmed salmon feed.⁷ The Norwegian salmon industry has been criticised by multiple environmental nonprofits for the large volume of wild-caught fish used in aquafeed,⁸ poor salmon welfare and high mortality rates,⁹ ¹⁰ and environmental pollution.¹¹

In 2022, Cargill acquired 24.5 percent of Multi X,¹² Chile’s second-largest salmon farmer with a production of over 115,000 tonnes in 2023, equivalent to 22.5 million individual fish.¹³ ¹⁴ ¹⁵

The majority of CQN’s aquafeed sales are for farmed salmon, tilapia, and shrimp.¹⁶

In 2023, CQN produced almost 1.8 million tonnes of feed for farmed seafood (“aquaculture”), of which about 1.1 million tonnes was salmonid feed (i.e. for salmon and trout).¹⁷

Cargill has grown in its aquafeed production over the past decade. In 2023, it produced 8.8 percent more feed than in 2017.¹⁸ This growth was driven primarily by increasing production of salmonid feed, which saw a 12 percent increase in the same period.¹⁹

Cargill was named “the worst company in the world” by environmental non-profit Mighty Earth in 2023 due to its supply chain links to deforestation, forced child labour, and displacement of Indigenous Peoples.²⁰

Glossary: Industrial aquaculture key terms & definitions

This profile addresses Cargill’s industrial aquaculture operations.

Controversies

Reliance on wild-caught fish for feed

Fish like Atlantic salmon are carnivorous and rely on smaller forage (or ‘pelagic’) fish for their nutrition.

Manufacturing the feed for farmed salmon therefore requires the inclusion of fishmeal and fish oil, which is made from wild-caught fish.²¹ As the salmon industry tripled, the total volume of feed used by the salmon industry increased 429 percent in ten years to 2017.²²

CQN reports that more efficient use of fishmeal and fish oil in salmon feed led to its inclusion as a percentage of aquafeed halving from 55 percent in 2005 to 27 percent in 2015.²³ However, in 2023, fishmeal and fish oil combined still made up almost a quarter of CQN’s salmonid feed feed in weight,²⁴ 65.5 percent of which came from whole, wild-caught fish – equivalent to over 1.5 million tonnes of fish.²⁵

The salmon industry’s reliance on wild-caught nutritious fish has led to criticism of the industry as an inefficient use of marine resources.²⁶

The fishmeal and fish oil industry has also been criticised for its negative impact on food security and jobs in the Global South,²⁷ and high levels of pollution around its factories;²⁸ as well as for its negative impact on other wildlife and marine food webs.²⁹ ³⁰

The industry also stands accused of spurring overfishing, primarily in countries in the Global South such as Peru, Vietnam, and India, and off the coast of West Africa.³¹ ³²

Supply Chain and Sourcing of Fishmeal and Oil (West Africa)

Like other aquafeed companies, Cargill is not fully transparent about the volumes, countries, and provenance of species of the wild-caught fish that are used in its aquafeed.³³

CQN discloses in its annual reports that it sources from the fishing region FAO34 – off the coast of Northwest Africa – where the fishmeal industry operations are known to cause pollution, food insecurity, and job losses for women fish workers in Mauritania, Senegal, and The Gambia.³⁴ ³⁵ ³⁶ ³⁷

Between 2019 and 2023, Cargill used over 260,000 tonnes of whole fish from Northwest Africa, according to its annual reports (see graph below).³⁸

The volume of fish from West Africa used by CQN in its aquafeed has declined since 2020. However the amount used in 2023 was still equal to 40,000 tonnes of whole fish,³⁹ which could satisfy the nutritional needs of over 1 million people in the region for one year. ⁴⁰

In January 2024, Cargill told the Financial Times that they source Mauritanian fish oil from one of two factories recognised by MarinTrust – a certification programme – as working to improve sustainability of the fishery.⁴¹

Use of Certified Ingredients

CQN stated in 2023 that half the fishmeal and oil used in its aquafeeds was sourced from fisheries that are classed as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).⁴²

In 2019, in response to growing concerns about depletion of pelagic fish stocks, CQN set a 2025 target to source all its marine ingredients from MSC-certified sources.⁴³ In 2023, CQN weakened this goal, stating that it would aim to source all marine ingredients only from “certified or improving sources by 2025”.⁴⁴
In 2023, 25 percent of whole fish used in CQN’s salmonid feed were certified under MSC, and 18 percent under the MarinTrust Standard, a certification programme for fishmeal factories.⁴⁵

MarinTrust has been criticised by NGOs as too lenient,⁴⁶ with reference to widespread overfishing and failings in fisheries management, charges it denies.⁴⁷ Meanwhile, the MSC has been accused of certifying unsustainable fishery practices.⁴⁸

Cargill funds and sources from the small pelagics Fisheries Improvement Project (FIP) in Mauritania.⁴⁹ Seven years after the FIP was established in 2017, round and flat sardinella – small fish species that are eaten through West Africa, and are targeted by the fishmeal and fish oil industry – are still overexploited and declining in the region.⁵⁰ ⁵¹

CQN states that the fishmeal and oil it sources from Mauritania is made from sardines (also known as “European pilchard”) in order to “help ensure a balance between drawing on the fishery to support aquaculture around the globe and providing essential nutrition for local communities.”⁵²

The Mauritanian European pilchard fishery has been found to have “serious management issues”, with Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing warranting concern, according to a 2022 report by the non-profit Sustainable Fisheries Partnership.⁵³ According to FIP news in September 2024, sardines are now classed as overexploited in one zone within the fishery.⁵⁴

Dave Robb, Sustainability Lead for CQN, who represents CQN on the Mauritanian FIP said the project is an “important example of how [CQN] can support fisheries to become more sustainable, generating benefits for Mauritania’s people, the fishing communities and us”.⁵⁵

Factories participating in the Mauritanian FIP have been linked to environmental pollution, with evidence of disposing untreated wastewater into local waterways,⁵⁶ ⁵⁷ which has led to negative impacts on human health such as skin diseases.⁵⁸

The aquafeed industry’s involvement in the Mauritianian FIP has been criticised. Environmental social scientist Christina Hicks, professor at the political ecology group at Lancaster University has said the FIP risks “legitimis[ing] the continued overexploitation of [a] crucial stock”.⁵⁹

Food Security Claims

CQN claims it is “nourishing the world”, and that farmed seafood produced using its aquafeed is vital to achieving food security globally.⁶⁰

A 2020 study in Nature found marine seafood farming’s food and nutrition claims to be “empirically inaccurate”. It stated that high-market value carnivorous fish species such as salmon, which is farmed by Cargill, “remain inaccessible to low-income consumers and the food-insecure”.⁶¹

The majority of CQN’s feed is for salmon and trout,⁶² which are mostly farmed and consumed in the Global North.⁶³ ⁶⁴ CQN partly owns Chilean salmon producer Multi X, which sells 60 percent of its salmon to the U.S.⁶⁵

CQN also uses a large amount of fishmeal and fish oil made from human-edible fish. In 2023, CQN used over 1.5 million tonnes of whole wild caught fish species,⁶⁶ most of which are suitable for human consumption.⁶⁷

CQN also sources a portion of its fishmeal and fish oil from sub-Saharan Africa (see ‘Supply Chain and Sourcing of Fishmeal and Oil (West Africa)’ above), where the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found in 2022 that “the industry constitutes a threat to the livelihoods and food and nutrition security of local communities”.⁶⁸

A report from Partner Africa, commissioned by the industry-led Global Roundtable for Marine Ingredients, found in 2023 that fishmeal factories in Mauritania and Senegal had caused food insecurity, undermining the availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality of food, especially for poorer people, and had led to loss of work and income for women fish processors.⁶⁹

Use of Antibiotics in Feed and Farming

Antibiotics are frequently used in aquaculture and fish farming to prevent disease and control the growth of bacteria that can infect and kill farmed seafood.⁷⁰ A 2020 study estimated that aquaculture “carries the highest use intensity [of antibiotics] per kilogram of biomass” between humans, terrestrial food animals, and aquatic food animals.⁷¹

The use of antibiotics in farming, both on land and in aquatic environments,⁷² contributes to antibiotic resistance, which affects the effectiveness of antibiotics used in both humans and animals.⁷³ The World Health Organisation recommends “significantly reducing” the use of antibiotics in farmed animals.⁷⁴

In 2023, 2.3 percent of CQN’s salmonid feed contained antibiotics, an overall 64.1 percent decrease from 2017. However, there are large regional variations, with antibiotic feed sales rising to nearly 8 percent in Canada and Chile. The former saw a 277 percent increase in antibiotic feed sales between 2017 and 2023.⁷⁵

In 2021, Multi X, the Chilean salmon farming giant part-owned by Cargill, launched an “ultra-premium” brand of farmed salmon grown without the use of antibiotics.⁷⁶However, across all of its salmon production, in 2023 Multi X’s antibiotic use increased by 30 percent year-on-year.⁷⁷ In 2023, 82 percent of the antibiotics used by Multi X were ranked as “high medical importance for human medicine” by the WHO.⁷⁸

Salmon Welfare, Mortality, and Illness

Multi X has been criticised for high levels of salmon mortality, exceeding salmon production limits (legal limits set my national regulators), and poor salmon welfare, as well as for using chemicals toxic to humans to treat salmon diseases.

Overall, Multi X’s mortality rate was over 9 percent in 2023, which represented over 2.3 million fish, the second highest mortality count on Chilean salmon farms in 2023.⁷⁹

In February 2023, Multi X was accused by the Chilean environmental agency Superintendencia del Medio Ambiente (SMA) of breaching salmon production limits,⁸⁰ which are in place to control the levels of nutrients in water that can deprive aquatic life of oxygen.⁸¹

Multi X exceeded limits by more than 13 percent at its site in the Las Guaitecas National Reserve in the Aysen region, a protected wildlife area in Chile.⁸²

In response to these allegations, Multi X said that it has “[committed] to regulatory compliance throughout its history and the sustainable development of the activity.”⁸³

In May 2022, low oxygen conditions led to a mass mortality event on Multi X’s farms, killing 250,000 fish at one of its sites.⁸⁴ In March 2023, low oxygen conditions again led to a mass mortality event, which killed another 30,000 fish.⁸⁵

Sea lice infestations are another common cause of death for farmed salmon.⁸⁶ For 10 months of 2023, Multi X’s sea lice count was high. For every salmon, there was at least one pregnant louse (gravid) which lay hundreds of eggs every few weeks.⁸⁷

Sea lice treatments can also be traumatic and deadly to farmed salmon. Multi X’s delouses salmon with hydrogen peroxide⁸⁸ – a chemical deadly to fish at high concentrations and one of the riskiest treatments.⁸⁹

Multi X uses other dangerous and toxic chemicals to treat other salmon diseases. In 2022, Multi X was criticised by Chile’s environment agency SMA for using formaldehyde and lufenuron to treat disease on salmon farms.⁹⁰ Formaldehyde is “highly toxic” to humans,⁹¹ according to the U.S. Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, while lufenuron can cause convulsions.⁹² The SMA has warned that the use of both chemicals could alter the biodiversity of the estuary around the salmon sites.⁹³

Links to Deforestation

As well as fish oil and fishmeal from wild-caught species, CQN’s fish feed is made up of other ingredients, such as vegetable oils, animal byproducts, and soy, the production and sourcing of which has been linked to deforestation.⁹⁴

Soy makes up at least 5 percent of CQN’s salmonid feeds and 20 percent of CQN’s other aquafeeds. Soy has been used increasingly as a source of protein to replace fishmeal and fish oil because of lower costs and reputational risks linked to the use of wild-caught fish.⁹⁵

Cargill is one of six traders that control over half of the soy market globally.⁹⁶ Environmental non-profit Mighty Earth found that Cargill was one of the two largest consumers of soy linked to industrial scale deforestation in Brazil and Bolivia in 2017.⁹⁷

In 2018, environmental nonprofit the Rainforest Foundation Norway linked Cargill and other salmon feed producers Skretting, Mowi, Biomar, and Polar Feed/Europharma to soy farmed on deforested land in Brazil.⁹⁸

In 2019, Rainforest Foundation Norway and environmental non-profit Framtiden i våre hender published a report that linked Cargill’s soy to illegal deforestation, illegal use of pesticides, unlawful use of indigenous lands, and violent conflict in the Brazilian Cerrado.⁹⁹

CQN North Sea Communications Director Hanne Dankertsen called the report and allegations about Cargill “inaccurate or misleading […] without providing insight into how assessments have been made”. He added “If the Rainforest Foundation has observed illegalities in an area where Cargill operates, it does not mean that the illegal activities take place in Cargill’s supply chain.”¹⁰⁰

Cargill continued to source soy farmed on recently deforested land in Brazil in 2020, according to environmental non-profit Trase.¹⁰¹

In November 2023, Cargill announced its goal to eliminate Brazilian, Argentinian, and Uruguayan deforestation and land conversion in its soy supply chains by 2025.¹⁰² Cargill has also stated its commitment to eliminate links to deforestation from all its agricultural supply chains by 2030.¹⁰³

Carbon Footprint

The aquaculture industry uses its carbon footprint – which is low compared to that of beef and lamb – to market itself as sustainable.¹⁰⁴ ¹⁰⁵

There is evidence that farmed carnivorous fish like salmon will always be higher emitting than eating small pelagic fish directly, due to the high carbon footprint of ingredients in fish feed such as soy.¹⁰⁶ A 2022 paper in academic journal Nature ranked farmed salmon and trout among the higher emitting categories of seafood.¹⁰⁷

CQN’s greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 30 percent since 2017.¹⁰⁸ In 2023, it reported its total Scope 1 and 2 emissions (those released directly or indirectly by its all its feed operations)¹⁰⁹ ¹¹⁰ to be over 160,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂e). In this period, its emissions intensity (emissions per volume of food produced) also increased, by 16 percent.¹¹¹

In 2021, CQN launched its SeaFurther Sustainability programme,¹¹² which focuses on raising “more sustainable seafood with less environmental impact”. By 2030 it aims to reduce emissions intensity by 30 percent per tonne of food. It estimates that the programme will reduce the company’s emissions by two billion kilograms of carbon dioxide by 2030, “equivalent to removing 400,000 cars from the road”.¹¹³

CQN reported on its “emissions intensity” for Scope 3 emissions (from its entire supply chain) for salmonid feeds as 1.89 tonnes CO₂e per tonne of feed in 2023.¹¹⁴ Based on this figure, using CQN’s salmonid feed production volumes, DeSmog estimated CQN’s total salmonid feed emissions as 2 million tonnes of CO₂e in 2023, a 5 percent increase year-on-year.¹¹⁵

The UN High Level Expert Group on net zero commitments encourages companies to focus on reducing absolute emissions rather than focusing on reducing emissions intensity, to avoid companies scaling up production despite increased efficiency.¹¹⁶

Lobbying

CQN engages in lobbying activities in a number of countries where it has major operations and subsidiaries, including the U.S., Scotland, and the EU.

Lobbying in the U.S.

Through CQN, Cargill is a voting member of the aquaculture industry group Stronger America Through Seafood (SATS) which represents companies including food manufacturer giant Sysco and the world’s largest meat company JBS.¹¹⁷

SATS aims to increase U.S. consumption of farmed seafood. On its website it characterises the U.S. aquaculture industry as being constrained by “extraordinary regulatory hurdles, a misinformed public perception of environmental impact, and limited capital investment to improve the technology.”¹¹⁸

SATS representatives met with congressional offices in the U.S. House and Senate in April 2022 “to advocate for the expansion of the American fish farming industry through offshore aquaculture”.¹¹⁹ In July 2024, SATS members including Cargill signed an open letter to the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee to support growth of the U.S. aquaculture industry.¹²⁰

The majority of U.S. farmed seafood produced is carnivorous,¹²¹ and uses fishmeal and fish oil derived from wild-caught fish. Local environmental pollution due to waste around fish farms and escapes of non-native salmon species has led to organised resistance to salmon farm expansion.¹²² ¹²³ ¹²⁴

Cargill spent over $1.3 million on lobbying activities in the U.S. in 2023, according to U.S. nonprofit research group OpenSecrets.¹²⁵

Lobbying in the EU

Cargill is registered with the European Transparency Register.¹²⁶ The company reported spending between $320,000 and $425,00 annually and listed the main policies targeted as those relating to climate, environmental, and agricultural regulations in the EU, such as the EU Green Deal.¹²⁷

Cargill is a member of the animal feed trade group European Feed Manufacturers’ Federation (FEFAC), which spent between $210,000 and $315,000 in 2023 lobbying the EU on topics such as the EU Green Deal and Farm to Fork Strategy.¹²⁸

In November 2022, FEFAC and Coceral – another agribusiness trade group which Cargill is a member of – wrote a letter lobbying to weaken a draft EU law that proposed banning food imports linked to deforestation, five days ahead of the international climate change conference COP26.¹²⁹ Neither FEFAC nor Coceral have specific policies on aquaculture on their websites, but FEFAC states its ambition to “contribute to climate-neutral livestock and aquaculture production through feed”.¹³⁰

Soy – a key ingredient in CQN’s fish feeds¹³¹ – is one of three main products driving global deforestation, which is a major driver of climate change.¹³² ¹³³

Lobbying in Scotland

CQN is a member of Salmon Scotland, a Scottish lobby group representing salmon farmers and feed producers. Scottish investigative outlet The Ferret reported that Salmon Scotland met with members of the Scottish government over 20 times in 2023, mostly to discuss sea lice limits and reducing regulations around obtaining salmon farm licences.¹³⁴

Salmon Scotland also successfully lobbied in 2023 against the expansion of Highly-Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs) in Scotland,¹³⁵ which would have prevented human activity on 10 percent of the Scottish coastline by 2026 in order to protect marine wildlife.¹³⁶ Salmon Scotland said that HPMAs expansion would “put jobs in already fragile coastal communities at risk and there was no scientific justification to support the introduction of HPMAs.”¹³⁷

Affiliations

In addition to the lobby groups above, Cargill has affiliations and partnerships with numerous organisations that have been accused by campaigners of greenwashing and pushing to weaken fisheries management.

CQN is a member of fishmeal and fish oil trade group IFFO,¹³⁸ a marine ingredients industry group that represents fish farmers, aquafeed producers, and fish oil traders, among others.¹³⁹

IFFO’s principal objective is “reputation management”.¹⁴⁰ ¹⁴¹ ¹⁴² It claims that the fishmeal and fish oil industry faces “much negative and unfair criticism”¹⁴³ and works to counter “negative messaging, exaggeration and misinformation”.¹⁴⁴ ¹⁴⁵ It also aims to demonstrate that the marine ingredients industry is necessary for “feeding a growing world population, sustainably and responsibly”.¹⁴⁶

Cargill is a member of the Global Roundtable on Marine Ingredients,¹⁴⁷ an industry group whose members include marine ingredients lobby group IFFO, food corporations, and feed companies.

Established in 2021, the Roundtable has said its aim is to “tackle a range of pressing environmental and social challenges”, gather evidence-based information on the industry’s impacts, contribute to discussions, and “increase the availability of sustainable marine ingredients”.¹⁴⁸

However, the Roundtable is dominated by animal feed and fishmeal and fish oil companies that currently source from West Africa, and has been criticised by campaigners and academics, who have called it “an industry body that is there to protect [the industry’s] interests”.¹⁴⁹

Employees at CQN sit on the social and ethical committee and the governing body committee of fishmeal and fish oil certification programme MarinTrust – an international certification programme for marine ingredients, which was founded by trade group IFFO.¹⁵⁰ ¹⁵¹ The presence of feed producers like CQN on MarinTrust’s multiple standards committees has been criticised by campaigners and academics as a “massive conflict of interest”.¹⁵²

Cargill is a partner and funder of multiple Fisheries Improvement Projects, including the Mauritanian small pelagics Fisheries Improvement Project (FIP).¹⁵³

CQN was a member of the committee responsible for developing the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC)’s Feed Standard, which launched in 2023.¹⁵⁴ The ASC programme certifies aquaculture companies for operating “responsibly” in alignment with ASC standards. CQN states that it is now working towards being certified against the ASC’s Feed Standard. CQN also lists the ASC as a partner on their website.¹⁵⁵ ¹⁵⁶