Costco cuts Chilean supplies

US retailer Costco is to buy less salmon from Chile because of concerns over antibiotic use. The supermarket chain, America’s third biggest, typically bought 90 per cent of the 600,000lb of salmon fillets it sells each week from Chile, accounting for nearly nine per cent of Chilean exports to the United States.

Costco now will buy 60 per cent of its salmon from Norway, and 40 per cent from Chile, the Fish Site reported.

Norway, the world’s largest farmed salmon producer, uses far less antibiotics. Latest figures from the Food and Agriculture Organisation show Norway produced 1.3 million tonnes of salmon and used just over 2,000 lb of antibiotics in 2013.

According to Reuters, Chile used 1.2 million lb of antibiotics last year on production of nearly 900,000 tonnes of salmon, a 25 per cent increase from 2013.

Costco is following the lead of Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, which have phased out Chilean fish in favour of antibiotic-free fish. By law all fresh or frozen salmon and other seafood on US grocery shelves must be labelled according to the country of origin and whether it is farmed or wild.

GROWING DEMAND A er this transaction, Cooke will own all the salmon farms in the area