French Supermarkets Still Stocking Krill-Fed Salmon

PARIS: Four years after a first investigation linked their shelves to Antarctic krill supply chains, France’s largest supermarket groups still have no policy excluding salmon fed on krill, and the commercial stakes behind that gap are coming into focus as a key Antarctic fisheries meeting approaches on 19 October.

Sea Shepherd France and the Changing Markets Foundation, which pressed Auchan, Carrefour, Intermarché/Groupement Mousquetaires and E.Leclerc for answers, say none of the retailers has committed to removing krill-fed salmon from their ranges. The organisations are calling on the chains to stop stocking the product altogether. E.Leclerc did not respond to the enquiries, leaving its current position unknown.

The retailer responses, collected in writing in 2026, reveal a market where demand for krill-based feed continues largely unimpeded at the retail level. Carrefour has promised to “strictly limit” krill in its Carrefour Quality Line by 2026-2027, but without a quantified target, and only krill that is not certified by the Marine Stewardship Council would be excluded. Intermarché cites a krill rate of 0.53 percent in its 2023 assessment, without detailing how that figure was calculated or which products it covers; new supplier requirements it has announced remain undefined. Auchan acknowledges it has no exclusion policy and no transparency obligation for its suppliers, and says only that it might study a gradual phase-out.

For the operators at the other end of the chain, the economics are substantial. The contested MSC recertification concerns Aker QRILL Company, the American-Norwegian firm described as the world’s largest krill fisher. Its fishing operations and its supply of products for animal feed were split off from Aker BioMarine in 2024, a corporate restructuring that formalised the separation of the harvesting business from the ingredients business feeding aquaculture demand. The Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition and the WWF have formally objected to the recertification, citing the fishery’s concentration, the dependence of wildlife on krill, and climate change. The certification decision has been postponed twice following those objections.

Carrefour and Intermarché both point to MSC certification as justification for their sourcing. The twice-delayed recertification process, however, leaves the market signal that certification is meant to provide in suspense, and the environmental groups argue the label does not account for the pressures the fishery places on the ecosystem.

Those pressures carry regulatory and commercial risk. Krill sits at the base of the Antarctic food chain, underpinning whales, penguins and many other species, yet the fishery is expanding rapidly. No rule requires vessels to keep distance from whales, and several cases of entanglement and drowning have been recorded. NGOs and the European Parliament have called for a moratorium to prevent irreversible damage to the ecosystem.

Meanwhile, the governance framework that allocates catches is also under strain. Rules distributing krill catches among sub-zones expired after the 2023-2024 season, according to the CCAMLR’s 2025 fisheries report, raising concerns that fishing pressure is now concentrating in areas vital for Antarctic wildlife. In 2025 and 2026, the catch threshold was exceeded, triggering early closure of the fishery. These findings are published ahead of the meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) beginning 19 October, against a backdrop of political deadlock.

Sea Shepherd France will launch its campaign to end Antarctic krill fishing and demand the withdrawal of krill-fed salmon from French supermarkets at an event in Paris on Tuesday 6 October at 19:00, at La REcyclerie, 83 Bd Ornano, 75018 Paris. Speakers include Lamya Essemlali, president of Sea Shepherd France, Paul Watson, Tara Ganesh, an activist opposing aquaculture within the Changing Markets Foundation, and Philippe Garcia of Défense des milieux Aquatiques. The event will be broadcast live on Sea Shepherd France’s Instagram, Facebook and YouTube channels. Further details of the campaign and the investigation are available at https://seashepherd.fr/actualites/krill-en-antarctique.

For retailers, the choice framed by the two organisations is increasingly a commercial one: continue stocking a product whose certification, supply rules and ecological licence are all in question, or move ahead of regulators and remove it. With the fishery’s allocation rules expired and certification twice postponed, the uncertainty now sits squarely with the brands and their suppliers. Whether any of the four chains acts before CCAMLR convenes on 19 October remains the open question.