Senegalese community mobilises against the harmful fishmeal industry

In Senegal, the artisanal fishing community is making sure that their voices are heard. Decades of negligent fisheries management, overfishing and the arrival of fishmeal and fish oil factories have led to a dramatic reduction in fish populations along the coast of West Africa. As a consequence, fishermen find it increasingly hard to secure their daily catch. This in turn creates a ripple effect along the value chain: fish processing suffers from an increasingly scarce and expensive raw material. The price of a crate of sardines, sardinella, mackerel for instance have risen ten-fold over the last few years, making it impossible for artisanal processors to compete. 

By tradition, fish processing is a woman’s profession in West Africa. On our recent visit to Cayar, a fishing town harbouring one of the largest fishing fleets in Senegal, we spoke to the local GIE (economic interest group) of women processors and their outlook remains grim. The group’s members – all independent processors – have been in steady decline from over 300 to around 70 with women leaving as they cannot make ends meet through fish processing anymore. Therefore, lethargy has fallen over the processing sites. And it isn’t just the factories that threaten their livelihoods – climate change and new offshore oil and gas exploration in Senegal make the group worry about further harmful effects on the coastal and marine biodiversity and the capacity of fish populations to recover. 

It’s been long since the women were able to pay for the fish they smoke, dry, salt and ferment out of their own purses. They tell us that the only reason they are still in business are foreign companies that buy their product up-front, prefinancing the purchase of the fish they process. Nowadays, most of the fish they use comes deep-frozen from the port of Dakar. Meanwhile, the fish landed on the beach just next to the processing site remains absurdly inaccessible. 

The women are not alone in their fight, however. Several coalitions are active in Senegal, advocating for sustainable fisheries and the fair treatment of artisanal fishing community. The Network of Women in Artisanal Fisheries (REFEPAS) Interprofessional Council of Artisanal Fisheries (CONIPAS), the National Coalition for Sustainable Fisheries (CONAPED), the Coalition Against Fishmeal and Fish Oil Factories have all been putting pressure on the previous and current government. Their goal is to put a stop to allowing further factories to be built on the Senegalese coast and to close the ones in operation. Additionally, they want to make the fisheries sector more transparent, enforce sustainable fishing practices, and prevent foreign fishing fleets from pillaging populations of fish essential to the nutrition and livelihoods across the region. Further desperate calls for action revolve around preventing the persistent tragedy of clandestine migration: among those attempting to cross the Atlantic to reach Europe via the Canary Islands, many come from families dependant on fisheries and who have run out of options. More than 22,000 people have made it to the Canaries this way, more than double than last year. 

When confronted with the devastation caused by the global seafood economy, industrial fish farming and the feed companies that rely on the fishmeal and oil sourced from places like West Africa, it is hard to believe in the many statements of sustainability and efficiency that fish feed and farmed fish producers often like to repeat. Madame Ndao, president of the women processors’ GIE in Cayar, cannot understand why ‘these companies have to come to West Africa to steal the fish that her people depend on. They should be taking the fish from their own waters instead of pillaging elsewhere.’ 

Feedback continues to work on this issue, hoping to support and amplify the voices like Madame Ndao’s. Our research has and will continue to illustrate how food systems in Europe can have devastating effects in other parts of the world. And we are not alone. The UN special rapporteur Micheal Fakhri, having received a Feedback-led joint letter, made sure to address the issue in the Human Rights Council, stating that: ‘Many farmed fish are carnivorous species that require feed products harvested from wild fish stock, thereby creating another source of pressure on wild fish stocks and disrupting ecosystems. Moreover, global feed companies are exacerbating food insecurity in some communities. For example, over half a million tons of pelagic fish that could feed over 33 million people in the region are instead extracted from the ocean along the coast of West Africa and converted to fishmeal and fish oil, primarily in order to feed farmed fish and livestock, mostly in Asia and Europe.’ We will continue to work with allies in the EU to make sure this issue is not forgotten in policy making and make sure to denounce the companies that profit from this harmful system.  

Photo credits:  Coalition against FMFO factories