Norwegian professor calls PO3 and PO4 "hellish production zones" as salmon farming faces 18% output cut and sea lice quota challenge

On the afternoon of Thursday, 6 November 2026, Professor Ragnar Tveterås of the University of Stavanger (UiS) gave a presentation at the Norwegian Seafood (Sjømat Norge) autumn conference held at the Edvard Grieg Hotel in Bergen, discussing the choices facing the farming industry under the Aquaculture White Paper (Havbruksmeldingen). On stage, he called the two production zones PO3 and PO4 "hellish production zones".

PO3 (from Karmøy to Sotra) and PO4 (from Nordhordland to Stad) have long been plagued by sea lice problems, and local farming companies have repeatedly been given red lights under the traffic light regulatory system in recent years and have received production cut decisions. Tveterås pointed out that PO3, after three downward adjustments, currently faces a combined 18% production cut — unless the Conservative Party (Høyre) can secure a parliamentary majority to demand that the last cut be stopped.

He also warned that conditions in other production zones are deteriorating, with more areas on yellow and red lights than before. This year, several areas in northern Norway that usually have lower sea lice pressure turned from green to yellow. "The north will also suffer. So it is not only the west that will be hit," Tveterås said.

To address sea lice and disease problems in farming, the Norwegian government has proposed tradable sea lice quotas and is studying options such as a fee on lost fish. Tveterås told the farming companies: "If we are to master sea lice quotas in the future, we have a lot of work to do."

In his presentation, he analysed the chain reactions that strict sea lice quotas could bring: on the one hand, they could reduce the impact on wild salmon; on the other hand, they could harm the welfare of farmed fish due to increased treatment frequency. Lower production and higher costs could also weaken value creation, reduce jobs in coastal municipalities and drag down local economies.

As for the lost-fish fee scheme the government is considering, Tveterås believes it is not the solution. "Then we would need a 'standard mortality committee', and we don't want to go there," he said, drawing loud laughter from the audience.

Tveterås stressed that the investment needed to tackle sea lice and disease must come from after-tax cash flow. "It is very important that this costs money. We cannot make this investment while maintaining current production levels. We must also both increase production and protect salmon from sea lice more effectively. This is our challenge, and it is actually possible," he said.

However, he believes farming companies must accept the limitations in modelling the impact of sea lice on wild salmon. "My heretical thought is that we may never get the level of sea lice-induced mortality estimates we want. Then we must accept reality, that this is where we are," he said.

To this end, he advocates establishing a new institutional framework for evaluating model estimates, deciding sea lice quotas and revising regulatory rules. He also suggests that companies rethink how capital is used for new sustainable business models. "We need to put environmental resilience mechanisms in place to accelerate innovation and learning, and that can only happen through investment. Progress here has been slow — one could say we have waited and waited, and now it remains to be seen how much longer we will wait," he said.

Tveterås also put binding cooperation in aquaculture on the agenda. Disease and sea lice do not respect the boundaries of farming sites, and cross-regional cooperation can help reduce infection pressure. But he pointed out that long-term cooperation requires companies to have confidence that the government will provide predictable framework conditions. "Our current administrative system is not prepared for a transformation of this scale," he said, adding that similar matters would be handled differently. "This clearly weakens the willingness and ability to invest. We must build an administrative system for the future, and that requires all the bright minds."

The conference also noted that traffic light research shows that strategic closure of farming sites may produce "compound interest effects".