Our landmark cruelty complaint for salmon in Tasmania's underwater factory farms

If millions of cattle died because of industry practices, there would be outrage and regulatory consequences. So, why is the salmon farming industry not being held to the same standards?

A staggering 4 million salmon perished in salmon farms in Tasmania last year. Their deaths reflect suffering on an unimaginable scale. And yet it seems nobody has investigated why they died. How long they suffered before they died. Whether anyone tried to help them. Whether their deaths could have been prevented…

That’s four million individuals — and not one of those questions was asked on their behalf.

So, we’ve asked them — in a landmark cruelty complaint that would, for the very first time, see the salmon farming industry investigated for potential breaches of Tasmania’s animal protection laws.

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Our cruelty complaint drew widespread media coverage, helping bring the treatment of farmed salmon and the need for regulatory scrutiny into public view.

Just because fish suffer underwater doesn't mean their suffering isn't real.

Shatha Hamade

Legal Counsel, Animals Australia

Salmon in Tasmania’s factory farms have been suffering and dying in large numbers for years. Yet for all the attention this industry has attracted — disease outbreaks, mass deaths, the impact on seals, dolphins and seabirds — it has only ever been scrutinised through the lens of the environment. Its effect on the animals themselves — the salmon — has never been tested against the very legislation written to protect them, until now.

And the list of potential breaches of animal welfare laws is extensive. It includes standard industry practices — painful fin-clipping, overcrowding, confinement, disease, and the failure to treat sick and injured fish — as well as serious incidents, like drone footage taken in 2025 showing live, twitching salmon being sealed inside a bin and left to suffocate among the dead.

Sea cages holding thousands of salmon sitting off the coastline of Tasmania.

A salmon in a sea cage in Scotland covered in sea lice, looking very unwell.

Factory farming looks different underwater. Thousands of salmon can be confined in a single sea pen, unable to escape when disease spreads, oxygen levels fall or water conditions become harmful.

Our legal complaint raises a bigger question: why has it taken so long for the suffering of fish in the salmon farming industry to be investigated?

Salmon are not exempt from Tasmania’s Animal Welfare Act. They are protected by the same law that protects dogs, cats and other animals from cruelty and unreasonable suffering.

Yet for years, the salmon farming industry appears to have been treated as though those protections barely apply.

That should trouble all of us.

No industry should be above the law, no matter how profitable, powerful or politically influential it may be. And when animals are suffering, we should be able to trust that the regulator responsible for protecting them will investigate, act and enforce the law.

If four million land animals — say cattle — died prematurely in this manner, there would be outrage. There would be regulatory intervention.

Shatha Hamade

Legal Counsel, Animals Australia

A salmon underwater, looking at the camera, with fellow fish in the background. — Wild Atlantic salmon are made for extraordinary journeys — from river to ocean and, years later, back to the waters where their life began. In a salmon farm, that vast natural world is reduced to the confines of a sea cage.

A salmon experiences the world in ways we may never fully understand. Yet their capacity to suffer, their instinct to avoid harm, and their desire to experience life as intended, are no less important because they exist in a world so foreign to our own.

The magnitude of the uninvestigated and unaddressed suffering in the salmon farming industry is almost unfathomable.

Now, because of our legal complaints, this has been recognised and highlighted across the Tasmanian media for the first time. Our goal is to ensure this regulatory failure doesn’t continue, and that the companies responsible for the suffering of millions of fish in the Tasmanian salmon farming industry are investigated and made accountable to the law.

Our deepest gratitude to the local advocates who have worked tirelessly for years to expose the impacts of Tasmania’s salmon farming industry. Their persistence has helped bring this issue to where it is today and laid the groundwork for us to lodge these legal complaints. It’s been such a pleasure and inspiration collaborating with them all on behalf of these animals.

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Our landmark cruelty complaint for salmon in Tasmania’s underwater factory farms.

BREAKING NEWS: Animals Australia has lodged formal complaints calling for an immediate investigation into potential breaches of Tasmania’s Animal Welfare Act across the state’s salmon farming industry.

Eat kindly for our oceans. Nearly there! Thank you ! Thank you!