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Fillet-Oh-Fish, A Film Documentary About Toxic Fish Farms and the Dangers of Eating Farmed Fish

by Jennie Richards · Published July 5, 2021 · Updated February 15, 2024

“Through intensive farming and global pollution, the flesh of the fish we eat has turned into a deadly chemical cocktail.”

This eye-opening, shocking and revealing documentary, Fillet-Oh-Fish, examines and exposes the world of factory farmed fish. The film includes exclusive footage from fish farms and factories across the globe and the routine practices used that are making farmed fish today some of the most toxic, dangerous food on the planet.

Kurt Oddekalv, one of Norway’s most respected environmental activists conducts research investigating how Norway’s fish farms operate and why fish farming is causing a large-scale health disaster. Kurt claims salmon farming is an unmitigated disaster, both from an environmental and human health perspective, teeming with bacteria, drugs, toxic pesticides, mercury, PCBs, dioxins, and radiation, and since the farms are located in open water, this pollution is in no way contained.

In the film, Kurt follows a rural road in western Norway along glaciers and cliffs to Norwegian fjords. Surrounded by fences, and hidden under the waters of the fjords, are massive factory salmon fish farms—all done behind closed locked doors, hidden from sight, and confining a high quantity of fish in a very small contained area. He visits the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam revealing the dangerous fishing practices of farming Panga, heavily used in France and Europe.

In 40 years, the global consumption of fish has doubled. And each year, the market needs to find more fish and new ways of production to answer the global demand. Where are these fish coming from? How are they fed? In which waters do they live? This is a dramatic investigation about the shocking truth of fish farming, some of the unhealthiest food on the planet you can possibly eat—and most dangerous.

Film Length: 54 Minutes

Film Published: 2013

Full Length Film – Fillet-Oh-Fish

Quotes from the Film

“This is our next food scandal.”

“This out of control industry is pouring a dangerous cocktail of toxic chemicals into our food.”

“Marketers call fish the ultimate health food, yet it’s flesh is some of the most toxic food in the food industry.”

“Farmed salmon also pose a more direct toxic threat to your health. Fish has always been considered a health food, but food testing reveals that today’s farmed salmon is one of the most toxic foods in the world.”
“Norwegian salmon are now considered the most toxic seafood on the market today.”

“Farmed fish are 5 times more toxic than all the other products found in our supermarkets.”

“You simply must avoid exposure to these pollutants in fish.”

“When you have too many fish confined together it causes them to get sick with infectious diseases and have a high mortality rate.

“The test group of mice in research that were fed farmed salmon – made them diabetic and obese. A theory correlates obesity with all the pollutants found in the environment.”

“What makes the salmon the most toxic fish of all, is not the pesticides poured into the farms, but the dry pellet food and what’s in that food – these are the pollutants that are fed to the salmon. The chemicals including Dioxins, PCBs, Toxephene, and worse.”

“So powerful are the pesticides that men are pouring on the fish farms they must protect themselves with work suits and gas masks from the chemicals used in order to protect themselves from all kinds of diseases that abound in the farms.”

Fillet-Oh-Fish, A Film Documentary About Toxic Fish Farms and the Dangers of Eating Farmed Fish

Panga Fish from Vietnam

“In France, fish consumption has more than doubled in the last 50 years, more than beef or chicken. Nearly half of all French fish is farmed fish. It’s the cheapest fish in the store.”

The economic success of Panga in Vietnam hides a more sinister, dark side. The “Panga King” has amassed the fourth richest fortune from his fish farms. Up to 300,000 Pangas live in one pond together and are fed three tons of pellet feed twice a day. Mr. Min puts the fish through a radical transformation in a matter of hours for maximum appeal – that is full of additives ready for export. To prepare the fish, over 1,000 workers process up to 100 tons of Panga per day. Roughly, 10 seconds per fillet for 10 hours per day. To clean the fillets, they are washed with poly-phosphates food additives to artificially add weight, plump them up, and make them tasteless and odorless. Every year, Vietnam exports 1.5 billion colorless, odorless, low-cost fillets to Spain, Brazil, and France.

Most farmed Panga are sick from pollution from the Mekong River waters. Panga is on the “Red List” that is dangerous for humans and the environment. The Mekong River is highly polluted due to human activity and household waste that is dumped into the river daily. Plus, massive pesticides and herbicides are dumped into the water due to nearby farms. Fish don’t have enough oxygen due to pollution, sickening the fish, and causing fish to become highly diseased. To treat the fish, farmers use dangerous doses of drugs and chemicals. These are commonly and heavily used on fish farms. The antibiotics are used to increase the resistance and immunity of the fish, which means the antibiotics must always be increased – continually. After the antibiotics, the pellets used to feed the fish is full of drugs, chemicals, and more antibiotics.

Real Life Horrors of Norwegian Salmon Farming

In Norway, salmon and fish factory farm owners are responsible for and sanction the use of toxic chemicals and pollution, and preside over an industry that is spreading sea lice, infectious diseases, and poisoned sick fish. The water in and around Norway is full of waste and filled with dangerous bacteria. A mix of food scraps and chemicals are poured into the water every day to feed the fish. Some of the pesticides that are the exact same pesticides and chemicals that were used in WWI to gas people.

One of the biggest problems for fish factory farming in Norway are the sea lice that lodge inside the fish and can kill them. Farmers are using pesticides to kill the sea lice, and these pesticides are causing horrific problems like genetic mutations of fish. Now 50 percent of all cod are born today with these genetic mutations, and it will take eight generations of cod to end the mutations.

Salmon are suffering equally disturbing mutations as a result of pesticide use. The inside of the salmon today are extremely mushy—they should be very firm; and they are fatty now, not lean which wild salmon are. Norwegian salmon are now considered the most toxic seafood on the market today. And pesticides and toxic chemicals are adhering to the high fat found now in Norwegian salmon, cod and other farmed fish. The farmed fish have much higher levels of pollutants than other fish from the oceans.

Health and medical professionals are completely changing their viewpoint about eating fish today. Fish is no longer recommended for people with immune problems, have cancer, had cancer, are pregnant, or want to keep toxins out of their bodies. Eating fish can dramatically affect our health. We find fish full of mercury and pesticides, full of radioactivity, heavy metals, PCBs, dioxins—it’s not the same fish anymore. Things are different today.

Pellet Feed – Why is it so Toxic?

“What makes the salmon the most toxic fish of all, is not the pesticides poured into the farms, but the dry pellet food and what’s in that food – these are the pollutants that are fed to the salmon. The chemicals including Dioxins, PCBs, Toxephene, and worse.”

Dry fish pellets for factory fish farms are made in Norway using eels and fatty fish from the Baltic Sea, one of the most polluted seas in the world that is full of toxic fish. But the people selling fish in retail markets today are warning their customers about the toxicity of Baltic fish (salmon, herring, fatty fish) that contain very high levels of Dioxin, one of the most toxic pollutants that we know of. Dioxin can cause multiple cancers, including reproductive cancers, and is extremely dangerous for pregnant women to ingest.

Paper mills are one of the main sources of Dioxin pollution. Also, nine countries that surround the Baltic Sea, including Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Poland, Estonia, Russia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, all dump their industrial chemicals into the Baltic. This is why salmon and herring are so vulnerable because they have fatty meat, which binds very well with toxic chemicals. The fattier the fish, the more pollutants bind with the fish’s fatty tissues. Some fatty fish from the Baltic are considered completely unfit for human consumption, which is why these fish are found in dry pellet fish feed today.

By concentrating in the fatty parts of the fish, the pollutants build up more toxicity. Then in addition to the toxic chemicals used in the fish food pellets, chemical antioxidants are also added including Liquid Ethoxyquin was produced and heavily used by Monsanto as a pesticide for decades. This is one of the best-kept secrets of the food industry. But what is a pesticide doing in fish feed? And in extremely high levels? The measurement of Ethoxyquin in fish feed is 10-20 times the norm than in wild fish that are not fed fish meal. But all farmed fish are contaminated with Ethoxyquin today.

Ethoxyquin is put into fish meal pellets to prevent the fat in fish from becoming rancid. But there are food standards for cattle and land animals against using this pesticide, but there are no regulations or standards for fish farms.

One research report was published about the toxicity of Ethoxyquin in farmed Norwegian fish pellet food. But the Norwegian Institute of Nutrition and Seafood Research (NIFES) threatened her if she published the report, and fired her to prevent the report from ever being published. She lost her job because of the revelations she found, along with five other reports that revealed how dangerous Ethoxyquin is to human and animal health. Then, four years ago the Norwegian Minister of Fisheries cut all research funding for Ethoxyquin. Turns out, the Minister is the major shareholder of Norwegian salmon farms and worked for years for a fish pellet company. Now she is working to protect the fish industry at the peril of human health and the health of our oceans. So fish are still sold all over the world that are dangerously contaminated and causes severe health problems.

One of the effects Ethoxyquin has on human health is that it has been found to cross the blood-brain barrier, which means the barrier protecting the brain from toxic substances is broken, leaking toxic chemicals into the brain itself. In addition, it has been found to be highly carcinogenic.