Once a popular choice for many Australians' Christmas Day spread, more and more consumers, and even top chefs are now shunning Tasmanian farmed salmon as awareness spreads about the environmental damage the industry is causing.

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The simple truth is, consumer trust in Tasmania's salmon farming industry is collapsing. An industry propped up by government inaction and supermarket complicity is losing its social licence.

What was once marketed as a "clean, green" product is now increasingly exposed as one of the world's worst-performing aquaculture industries on environmental grounds.

The evidence is piling up. Regular mass fish kills. Extraordinary volumes of antibiotics released into coastal waters.

Government warnings telling recreational fishers to stay kilometres away from farm sites. We are not aware of any other aquaculture industry globally that poses a catastrophic extinction risk to an endangered species.

Tasmanian salmon farming does exactly that, threatening the critically endangered Maugean skate, whose only habitat is Macquarie Harbour, where salmon farming continues despite ongoing public outrage.

Besides a raft of questionable industry practices, the fish they are farming aren't even a sensible fit for Tasmanian waters. Atlantic salmon are cold-water fish from the northern hemisphere, and with Tasmania's ocean temperatures warming at nearly four times the global average, Tasmania is now the warmest place on Earth to industrially farm Atlantic........

© Canberra Times