The truth about Abel & Cole’s shocking salmon switch

A new form of factory farming

If you’ve been following Foodrise’s campaigning for a while, you will know that most of the salmon eaten around the world is farmed. Raised in marine cages off the coasts of Norway, Chile, Scotland and Canada. 

But what you may be less familiar with is that companies are now starting to experiment with producing salmon in tanks on land. This is a new form of factory farming, bringing with it a fresh wave of animal suffering and environmental harms.  

Salmon – born to swim through rivers and seas – are being crammed into sterile tanks on land, circling endlessly under artificial lights inside factories and warehouses.  

As outlined in our briefing Fish out of water – Pulling the plug on land-based salmon factory farms – published with oceans NGO Seastemik and endorsed by more than 20 organisations globally – these factory fish farms are only deepening the industry’s existing harms.  

Whether on-land or at sea, salmon farming is an astonishingly inefficient and unsustainable food production system. It takes up to 6kg of wild fish to produce just 1kg of farmed salmon, harming marine ecosystems and taking food away from coastal communities. 

Tech failures at land-based fish farms are leading to repeat mass mortality events where thousands of fish die. Our research has identified at least 17 major mortality incidents since 2020. Alongside this, up to six times more salmon are crammed into tanks compared to marine cages, amplifying intensification and  animal suffering.  

Land-based salmon is nothing more than factory farming.  

Abel & Cole is opening the floodgates to this new fronter of factory farming 

Last year Abel & Cole, the organic food delivery service, made the switch from selling salmon raised in marine cages to salmon produced in land-based tanks.  

Foodrise has already been in communication with Abel & Cole, alerting them to the harms of land-based salmon, but they are continuing to promote land-based salmon as ‘responsibly farmed’ and a ‘trailblazing alternative’.   

We’re deeply concerned that Abel & Cole’s move to land-based salmon will open the floodgates for other companies to follow suit – resulting in exponential growth of this new frontier of factory farming. 

Are you being fooled?  

Abel & Cole’s promotion of land-based salmon is misleading customers who want to make sustainable choices. Their website is full of customer reviews who are happy to be able to buy – and eat – so-called “sustainable” salmon. But how wrong they are. 

“I regularly shop with Abel & Cole and I’m utterly appalled that they would seek to profit from such awful factory farming,” says Denise Long from Southampton after we brought Abel & Cole’s salmon sourcing to her attention. 

Adding: “If a product can’t be sourced ethically and sustainably, then a company such as Abel & Cole should stop selling it altogether. If they continue to sell salmon produced in this way, then I will have no choice but to withdraw my custom.” 

What can I do? 

By pushing back against companies opening the floodgates to this new form of factory farming, we can still stop it becoming the new normal.   

That’s why we’re urging Abel & Cole to tell the truth and stop supporting factory farming before it’s too late.  

This is your chance to join our calls and say no to factory farming. 

Take a couple of minutes to contact the company using our email template and join us in amping up pressure to do the right thing. 

Amelia Cookson is Industrial Aquaculture Campaigner at Foodrise