The status of the New Southern Partnership was the main topic that the president of the Association of Magellan Salmon Farmers, Carlos Odebret, discussed with the presidential delegate, Luz Bermúdez, in an extensive meeting that lasted more than an hour. “We were able to review the conditions of the industry in general and the relationship it has with the use of common goods and the regulations that depend on it”, introduced Odebret, acknowledging that although Nova Austral “is not our company; it affects the people who live in Porvenir.”
Although the meeting took place as the Superintendence in the Environment announced the beginning of the sanction process against the Southern Mar company for production in the regions of Aysén and Magallanes, Odebret indicated that although this matter was not discussed with the delegate “. it is a case that, like all sanction processes, in the environmental courts and there the company will have to present its reasons and, of course, the opposite will present different perspectives and it will be the Environmental Court that decides.There are specific sanctions.
This case, as in Nova Austral, has been registered since 2020, where the regulations were different and therefore, Odebret points out “of course, from then on they started a very strict program to improve the standard, in particular. compliance, in this case, with the regulations, but it is a process that follows the institutional channel and to that end, our country has established a very solid institutional structure, especially with the Environmental Law and the creation of environmental courts and also the National Fisheries Service, which supervises the compliance of the industry”.
The manager does not believe that this industry is more closely observed than others, by associations associated with environmental protection, “but rather that this is an industry that has a fairly extensive regulatory framework, from the environment, labor, health, multiple institutions that also regulate and monitor the salmon industry, such as the Undersecretary of Fisheries, the National Service, the Superintendence in the Environment, the maritime authority, the Directorate of Labor, the Health Service, among others, a series of institutions that monitor the salmon industry; at the same time, the inspection process that carries out its own attributions. Some numbers, 30% of the inspections of the Superintendence in the Environment, in Chile, in salmon are carried out in the industry, the industry with the most inspections in the whole country and the level of compliance are very high, close to 90%, only 10% end up in the sanction process, so if we look at the cases that have appeared in recent times, they must be observed in context. If the car at least once a day blocked for 360 days, they will likely find a “pattern” of infringement.
Finally, Carlos Odebret stated that, along these lines, the protocols are adapted to comply with the regulations and to emphasize that “foreseeable pressure is good so that citizens can evaluate the sector and have peace of mind that the salmon industry is moving forward. compliance path, and to achieve this, companies have to standards implementation and verification systems on a permanent and regular basis”, concluded the president of the Salmon Farmers Association.
