A video barely 17 seconds long is causing an uproar in southern Chile. 😨 Several people can be seen applying dye with brushes to salmon fillets, and then using a hair dryer to remove the moisture. All of this in clandestine plants between Puerto Montt and Calbuco, as revealed by the newspaper El Llanquihue.
Suspicion is strong: that salmon would be coming from mortalities at farming centers or directly from thefts from the formal industry, doctored to look fresh and sold in the informal market. The Los Lagos Regional Health Secretariat, Evelyn Brintrup, has already warned: buying outside authorized businesses can end in fever, vomiting, and severe diarrhea, because this fish may carry listeria, toxins, or histamine.
SalmonChile and the Salmon Council described the incident as extremely serious. The investigation is just beginning and no one has yet been formally held responsible, but the question is already spreading across social media: how much of this doctored salmon ended up on someone’s table without anyone noticing?