Salt... it has lots and lots of salt in it. It's been sitting for 20+ years. It isn't going to "compost" any more than it already has.

Salt isn't conducive to things growing - or composting. High salt levels kill bacteria and hurt plants.

Fish sauce is very high in salt.

Salty.

I don't have much familiarity with composting or fish sauce production, but wouldn't the high salt content make it a bad fertilizer?

Environment Canada’s testing found it ‘acutely lethal’. I’d consider composting an acutely lethal substance that is extremely high in salt to be the dumb idea.

Canada actually has scientists. From reading through these comments, I know that’s a shock but we do, they test things and they follow the evidence before making recommendations. In fact, those test results from back in 2016 are even public.

Just because this is news to you doesn’t mean it’s a new thing. Other cheaper solutions were looked into and they weren’t safe enough. It’s remarkably simple if you make yourself aware of everything involved. Salt in a compost though? How does that work?