Major UK supermarkets selling sea bass and sea bream linked to overfishing and food insecurity in Senegal, reveals new investigation. A new joint investigation by DeSmog and The Guardian reveals that several leading UK supermarkets, including Waitrose, Co-op, Lidl, Aldi, and Asda, are selling sea bass and sea bream sourced from Turkish fish farms that are fuelling the overfishing of depleted Atlantic waters off Senegal’s coast, undercutting local jobs and food security.
Over the past four years, Turkish sea bass farmer Kilic and its subsidiary Agromey, which control a quarter of the UK’s imports of Turkish sea bass and sea bream, have sourced over 5,400 tonnes of fishmeal and oil made from small “feed fish” from Senegalese waters.
These pelagic fish, essential for local diets, are harvested unsustainably, driving overfishing, unemployment among local women fish workers, and environmental pollution near fishmeal factories in Senegal’s coastal communities.
Despite holding Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) certification, which ties the firm to sourcing feed from “well managed fisheries”, Kilic has sourced fishmeal every year for the last four years from Senegal, where fisheries are poorly regulated and critically overexploited, and which received a yellow card from the EU for inadequate action against illegal fishing earlier this year.
DeSmog’s analysis estimates that in the last four years, the volume of fish diverted into Kilic’s Turkish fish feed could have met the recommended dietary needs of nearly 2 million people.
“If we continue like this,” says Diaba Diop, who heads up a national network of women fish workers, “The sea will become a liquid desert. When people don’t have enough to eat, we can’t use it to feed animals.”
Turkey dominates 85% of the UK’s farmed sea bass market, with imports growing 7% in 2024. UK wholesalers New England Seafood International and Ocean Fish, which supply these supermarkets, have sold a combined total of 473 tonnes of sea bass and sea bream farmed by Kilic Deniz and its subsidiary Agromey in the past four years. This quantity is equivalent to nearly 5 million fillets.
Since the fishmeal factory Omega Fishing opened in 2011, local women fish traders in
Senegal have been priced out of the market. As fishmeal exports have increased, the availability of small, affordable fish such as sardinella, a staple in Senegalese diets, has sharply declined.
As of the reporting time, 500 grammes of keccax (dried and smoked sardinella), which used to cost £0.13 (CFA Francs 100), now costs as much as £1- £2, depending on the season.
In 2023, a year that saw fishmeal exports climb to an eight-year high, persistently high food costs
pushed Senegal into crisis-levels of hunger for the first time on record.
Data shows that fish stocks in Senegal have fallen to record lows in recent years, with annual landings dropping from fluctuations between 100,000 and 250,000 tonnes (2010–2020) to approximately 10,000 tonnes annually over the past four years. A report out earlier this month from the Environmental Justice Foundation cited research that
shows 57 per cent of fish populations in Senegal are in a similar state of collapse.
This investigation highlights the complex and opaque global seafood supply chains that connect overfishing in West Africa to UK supermarket shelves.
Key findings:
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Turkey seafood giant Kilic Deniz imported 5,400 tonnes of fishmeal and fish oil from Senegal in the last four years.
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Fishmeal production at three Senegalese factories identified as linked to the UK sea bass supply chain has caused unemployment for women fish workers, pollution, and overexploitation of fish stocks.
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The fish disappearing into Kilic’s fish feed every year, on average, could have fed nearly 400,000 people – the same number as those who fell into crisis levels of hunger in Senegal in 2023.
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UK supermarkets sourcing sea bass from Kilic include Waitrose, Co-op, Lidl, Aldi, and Asda, all sold with the label “responsibly sourced”. A further four retailers buy from wholesalers that are known to import Kilic-farmed fish.
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Kilic and its subsidiary Agromey have shipped at least 473 tonnes of sea bass and bream to UK supermarkets in the past four years – equivalent to nearly 5 million fillets.
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Overall, including the fish that are sold to restaurants and fishmongers at markets such as London’s Billingsgate, Kilic’s produce accounted for a quarter of all the sea bass and sea bream imports into the UK in the past four years.
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Senegal received an EU yellow card in May 2024 for failing to tackle illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing; 57 per cent of fish populations in the country are in a state of collapse.
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Sea bass farms in south-western Turkey, where Kilic’s cages are located, along with many others, are polluting local habitats, including protected seagrass meadows.
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“If you do eat fish, how do you make an ethical choice in a supermarket aisle, if food labelling is so appalling that you’re incapable of doing so? This is robbing consumers of their right, in a climate and biodiversity crisis, to use the most powerful forms of protest, which is economic protest. Until [supermarkets] accept their corporate responsibility to allow us to make ethical choices in those aisles, they’re in dereliction of their duty.” Chris Packham, English naturalist, nature photographer, television presenter and author
“There’s another failure in this story – that of food assurance schemes – it’s something we see with all types of factory farming – the British public are being sold a fairy story of ‘responsible sourcing’. It’s so very Trumpian in nature – claim exactly what you are not, deny exactly what you are. In light of this exposé, UK supermarkets should immediately take all Kilic products off their shelves and take a good, hard look at all farmed fish products they sell – a simple accreditation or assurance is clearly not enough, and the British public should stop buying it.” Dale Vince, campaigner and founder of the Green Britain Foundation.
“This investigation highlights our fundamentally broken food system, in which the fish that should be feeding people in Senegal and West Africa is being turned into fishmeal for farmed fish to feed European consumption. This is modern-day ecological colonialism, stealing food from people’s plates to fuel our unjust global food system. British supermarkets claim to sell ‘responsibly sourced’ sea bass while their supply chains deprive West African communities of essential protein.” Dr Aliou Ba, senior oceans campaigner at Greenpeace Africa.
“Farmed sea bass is fundamentally unsustainable, similar to salmon. But it’s falling below the radar. Sea bass and sea bream farms are accelerating the degradation of Poseidon seagrass meadows, which serve as vital nurseries for wild fish, support marine biodiversity, protect coastlines, and sequester carbon. The industry is expanding with little oversight.” Eva Douzinas, the Rauch Foundation and Aktaia, a coalition of communities from Greece calling for stronger protections against the harmful impacts of fish farming.
“By connecting the dots between fish taken from Senegal, sea bass farms in Turkey, and UK wholesalers and retailers, it shows that companies here are complicit in a long chain of extraction which is inflicting harm on communities in one of the most food-insecure regions of the world. This is why Foodrise is campaigning for a moratorium on new industrial fish farms and for a ban on sourcing fishmeal and fish oil from food-insecure regions, including West Africa.” Amelia Cookson, campaigner at advocacy group Foodrise (formerly Feedback).
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