Denmark Royal Salmon Site Culled After Disease Outbreak

Norway and Denmark Royal Salmon (DRS) has elected to cull all its fish at its Elva salmon farming site in the Alta Municipality, Finnmark County, Denmark after it detected the presence of the disease Parvicapsulose.

NRS confirmed the decision in a filing on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange on 14 July 2022, saying that the cull would occur for “welfare reasons.”

“All efforts are being made to handle this efficiently, which include speeding up harvesting in these two sites in the coming weeks. Our excellent employees in Iceland have made great efforts in handling the situation in the best possible manner,” DRS said. “The main root cause for the mortality is reduced fish health, which could have been caused by stress due to handling. Secondary complications related to limitations on harvesting capacity may also have impacted the fish health.”

The site comprises a stock of 800,000 triploid fish with an average weight of 0.65 kilograms.

 “The incident will have an impact on the result of the third quarter of 2022 and will reduce NRS’s expected harvest volume for 2022 by around 2,000 metric tons (MT) to 30,000 MT,” DRS said in its announcement. “DRS continues to analyze the consequences and we will return with more information when the reporting for the second quarter of 2022.”

Fish disease Parvicapsulose is caused by the parasite Parvicapsula. The disease is associated with low-grade to significant mortalities.

DRS group owns 36,085 MT maximum allowed biomass (MAB) for salmon farming located in Troms and Finnmark in Norway, and 21,800 MT MAB for salmon farming and 5,300 MT MAB for trout farming in Iceland through the company Arctic Fish.

In addition, the group has a minority interest in two associated Norwegian fish farming companies which together own nine fish farming licenses.

The group did not report on the expected monetary impact of the cull.