Kayar residents have long complained about Touba and its effects on the community’s food supply, environment, and health, and there have been active efforts to resist the plant from the beginning. The plant was constructed by Barna, a Spanish company, in 2018, and initially operated under that name, according to 2023 reporting by Hakai Magazine.1
When plans to build the plant were announced, Greenpeace criticized its opening in a statement arguing that the Senegalese government was violating its promise not to allow the installation of new fishmeal or fish oil plants.2 In response to these critiques, the government issued a statement explaining that approval for the factory was granted prior to the government’s decision to freeze new authorizations, and thus was entitled to continue construction and operation.3 The factory began test production in November 2020 and became fully operational by May 2021.4 It had the capacity to process more than 100 tons of fish every day.5 In July 2022, following protests over water and air pollution from the factory, Barna sold the plant to a Senegalese company named Touba Protein Marine, according to Sentient Media.6 Protests continued, growing in size and intensity.7 At a protest on September 29, 2022 three people were injured. At another protest on October 6, 2022, one person was injured.8 Both Barna and Touba denied claims that the plant had caused environmental harm.9
Under Senegalese law, a fishmeal plant cannot be built within 500 meters, or about 550 yards, from a residential area.10 However, the Touba plant was built directly “in the heart” of a subdivision zoned for residential use, said Alé Sy, a 33-year-old Kayar resident and manager of communications for Taxawu Kayar, a collective of fishers in Kayar, in a May 2024 interview with The Outlaw Ocean Project.11 Several other activists interviewed by The Outlaw Ocean Project and various media outlets raised this issue and alleged that Barna colluded with the local government to get around zoning restrictions. Historical satellite imagery confirmed that many homes and businesses already existed within 500 meters, or about 550 yards, of the site where the plant would be built, in possible violation of Senegalese zoning laws, according to a review by The Outlaw Ocean Project.12
Mor Mbengue, the coordinator of Taxawu Kayar, said Touba’s factory sits on “1124 plots of land for residential use,” depriving “1200 families of their land” in an interview with The Outlaw Ocean Project.13 Serigne Mbaye, a Senegalese activist, claimed in a 2023 interview with Naiz that Touba “got that license through corruption.”14 Barna purchased the land for the plant from the town’s mayor for 50 times the market value, according to Mbengue and Maty Ndau, a 63- year-old lifelong Kayar resident who is the president of a group of women fish processors.15
Ndau reported that the pollution of the drinking water had caused nausea, stomach aches and heart problems among locals.16 Like many other locals, Mbengue said he avoided tap water, and instead spent extra money to buy mineral water, he said in an interview with The Outlaw Ocean Project.17 Hadim Seck, a local boatmaker interviewed by Hakai Magazine echoed these claims, Locals “go to the next town to get water now,” he said.18 Mamadou Leye, Taxawu Kayar’s secretary, added that “many local inhabitants are increasingly suffering from respiratory diseases and other chronic infections linked to the fishmeal processing plant,” according to a press report.19
Many Kayar residents rely on artisanal fishing for sustenance and income. Women who collectively own a fish processing center in Kayar reported that, while in years past, “their work provided both a reliable income and an affordable food source for their families and others throughout West Africa,” now, “any fish not snagged by international trawlers is carted to the local fishmeal factory,” according to 2023 reporting by Sentient Media. The majority of the fish population in the area is processed into fishmeal, exported, and used to feed poultry, pigs and fish overseas, rather than feeding the community in “a region where hunger quadrupled last year.”20 Sardinella (“yaboi” in the local language of Wolof) is a vanishing staple in Senegalese diets.21 A manager at the local processing center said that they “go months without seeing yaboi,” in an interview with Sentient Media.22 “We have nothing; even for thiéboudiène, we have nothing.”23 (Thiéboudiène is Senegal’s national dish, made of fish and rice).
She pointed to this resource extraction as a driver of increasing migration out of the country. All four of Ndau’s sons had left Senegal for Spain. “We can't find any fish, we don't have food anymore,” Ndau said. “That’s why they leave illegally, to find money for the family, because we can't stay like this.”24 Mor Mbengue added that “almost half of the youth [in Kayar] prefer to emigrate.” He too tried to leave Senegal in 2006, embarking on a week-long trip to the Canary Islands, where he remained for 36 days before repatriating, though most of his family live in Spain, Mbengue said.25 Aliou Ba, leader of Greenpeace Africa’s oceans campaign, told Mongabay that by overfishing in order to produce fishmeal and export it abroad, companies like the Touba Protein Marine “deprive local populations of their fish,” which would otherwise be used directly for human consumption, and force local vendors out of business.26
Historically, around 325 women worked in the first processing plant in Kayar with Ndau, but by 2023, due to a shortage of fish, the workforce was only a quarter of what it once was. Every time she went to the port to buy fish, she said, the sellers told her they were setting the fish aside for the factory. “We are becoming poor because we have no more work,” she said in an interview with The Outlaw Ocean Project. In order to compete and win over local buyers, the factory purchased fish at much higher prices, Ndau said.27 In 2024, Sy provided an update: the local artisanal processing industry had declined further, he said, with fewer than 50 women employed at the processing station.28
Aside from overfishing, another threat to local fish stocks has been the tendency of fishers to target juvenile fish for sale to the Touba plant. “We cannot talk about a better future and good resource management if we kill and exploit the juveniles,” said Maty Ndau, the president of the women fish processors in Kayar. In the past, the fishing season lasted nine months. Now it is no longer than three months, she said in 2023.29
Organizations like the International Fishmeal and Fish Oil Organization (IFFO) often tout improvements such as sourcing more trimmings (fish by-products) instead of whole fish, and implementing sustainability certifications such as MarinTrust. However, in West Africa, the fishmeal production is almost entirely from whole fish catches, not by-products. In Senegal, the government tried to minimize the impact on fish population and food insecurity by requiring fishmeal plants to only take in fish waste.30 This rule is also sometimes contractually specified in a fishmeal plant’s operating license. For example, a copy of Touba’s license from 2021 obtained by The Outlaw Ocean Project explicitly forbids purchase of fresh fish.31 Factory officials have repeatedly asserted that they abide by this rule and that they rely only on waste from the canning industry and other fish processing plants for their fishmeal production, rather than whole fish which could otherwise be eaten by humans.32
However, wholesalers told reporters in 2023 that they regularly sold fresh fish to the Touba plant.33 Alé Sy said in 2024 that while the factory indeed only took in fish waste when it first opened, more recently, the plant operator has begun to rely on fresh fish for processing because the waters are so depleted that it is difficult for a fishmeal factory to turn a profit if they only use cuttings.34
In 2022, Taxawu Kayar filed a lawsuit in the High Court of Thiès in Senegal to demand closure of the Touba Protein Marine factory.35 The collective, supported by Greenpeace Africa, accused the plant operator of repeatedly violating environmental regulations, polluting the town’s air, soil, and water, and causing public health problems. An environmental impact study required by the government also withheld key pieces of information from regulators and the public, the group’s lawyer said.36 In the lawsuit, the collective presented video documentation of a truck tied to the Touba Protein Marine factory dumping waste into Mbawane Lake in Kayar.37 Results from a lab analysis of Mbawane Lake and Kayar’s tap water found high levels of toxic metals in both. These tests found more than 30 times the level of selenium and four times the legal level of chromium were found in the town’s tap water. The tests also found more than three times the legal level of selenium and nearly three times the legal level of chromium were present in the lake. There were low oxygen levels in the lake water, suggesting that the lake was polluted with biodegradable organic matter, poorly oxygenated, and uninhabitable for fish and other aquatic life.38 In November 2022, the High Court dismissed the lawsuit, calling the allegations in the lawsuit to be “unfounded.”39 Ndau alleged that the case was thrown out due to government corruption, stating in an interview with The Outlaw Ocean Project that as she was walking out of the courthouse after the case was dismissed, she heard Babacar Diallo, the owner of the plant, say he had already given away two briefcases of money, and “now, I have given three.”40
In January 2023, the municipality of Kayar “banned the discharge of wastewater into a local lake and its surroundings,” a major win for Touba’s opponents.41 In fact, the plant never stopped disposing of its wastewater into the lake, according to Maty Ndau, the president of the women fish processors in Kayar.42
Touba Protein Marine did not respond to a request for comment.43