GERMINATIONS: Conversations in Environmental Humanities with Latin America & the Caribbean

In this talk, Ernesto Semán will trace the origins of the pink colour in fish produced by the salmon-farming industry through the lens of Justus von Liebig’s notion of the “Robbery Economy.” He will show how animal factories replace astaxanthin—the nutrient absorbed by wild salmon in the sea—with synthetic colouring, disrupting the natural cycle that is crucial to the fish’s use value while simultaneously boosting its exchange value. Generally regarded as a noble wild animal and a nutritious food, salmon in farms undergo a violent transformation that deprives them of both traits. Whereas “farm” is a label encouraged by the food industry for animals such as pigs, cows, or chickens—conveying a sense of domestic reciprocity between humans and the rest of nature—the opposite occurs with salmon: factories have fought to hide the farmed origin of the fish in order to reinforce the visual appeal attached to its colour.

Ernesto Semán is a historian teaching at University of Bergen, in Norway. He is the director of the project "Darklax: The Dark Side of Sustainability. A transnational history of salmon farming" funded by the Norwegian Research Council.


This term, the GERMINATIONS series is being organised in collaboration with the Environmental Humanities Research Hub's Critical Conversations in Environmental Humanities (external link) series.