Tag Archives: Aquaculture

Norwegian anti-fish farm activist Kurt Oddekalv at one of his provocative campaign stunts

Bad Boy Salmon Activists Teaming Up in Norway

Oceans, Salmon Farming and Aquaculture,
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The Norwegian salmon farming industry got a lesson in the old adage, “be careful what you wish for” this week when it learned of industry critic Don Staniford’s next job.

The British-born, globe-trotting salmon activist announced on his blog yesterday that following his scheduled deportation from Canada later this month he will be heading to Norway to work with that country’s leading environmentalist bad boy, Kurt Oddekalv, head of the Green Warriors of Norway. 

The industry may have got its wish – seeing the last of Staniford in BC – but it’s turning out to be a case of out of the frying pan, into the fire.

Oddekalv had this to say on the development: “I am pleased to announce that Don Staniford is coming to Norway to spearhead the global work of the Green Warriors. Once he has finished fighting the Norwegian Government owned company Cermaq in the Supreme Court of British Columbia, Don is welcome here in Norway.  Cermaq’s problems in Canada are coming home to roost.”

One of the industry’s three Norwegian titans – which together own 92% of BC’s salmon farms – Cermaq-Mainstream, is currently suing Staniford for defamation at the BC Supreme Court over his recent campaign comparing salmon aquaculture to Big Tobacco. On the opening day of the trial last month, officers from the Canadian Border Services Agency showed up to inform Staniford he would be deported following the trial for over-staying his visa. The charge is accurate, and yet it was hard not to draw a connection to the industry and its close ally, the Harper Government, given the place and manner in which Staniford was delivered the news.

Staniford and Oddekalv are unquestionably the global salmon aquaculture industry’s boldest foes. Both employ provocative tactics that consistently get under the industry’s skin. Their partnership is the salmon activist equivalent of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro joining forces.

I’ve met Oddekalv on several occasions and spent a few days at his Green Warriors headquarters near Bergen, Norway in 2009 – while working on my film “Farmed Salmon Exposed”. To describe Oddekalv as a character is an understatement. The man is a larger-than-life eco-Viking, always happy to regale his guests with tales of his daring exploits against the industry and other environmental violators in his native Norway. 

Meanwhile, Staniford is the man who developed a global network of salmon farming critics through his former position as director of the Pure Salmon Campaign out of Washington, D.C. His quest against open net pen aquaculture has taken him to all the industry’s operations – in Norway, Chile, Scotland, Ireland, Canada and the US – many times over.

Staniford – who has also plied his trade in BC during an earlier stint with the Friends of Clayoquot Sound and before that in Scotland –  decamped again to BC a year and a half ago, as the province was developing into the front line of the battle over salmon aquaculture. But in the course of that time, he’s gone from the director of a well-funded global campaign to guerrilla-style warrior with few resources, surviving mostly on donations from supporters (in recent weeks, his phenomenally successful legal defense fundraising campaign has netted some $50,000 in public donations).

Partnering with Oddekalv provides a major boost to Staniford’s work. Despite his comparably daring campaign tactics, Oddekalv runs a well-oiled operation – offering Staniford resources he has lacked in recent years. For Oddekalv – perhaps the only major environmental leader who would dream of hiring Staniford right now – the activist from Liverpool may prove a valuable catch. The two men’s tactical styles are a good fit – and Staniford brings to the Green Warriors of Norway a global perspective and rolodex to match, not to mention his unrelenting determination to take down the industry.

Staniford’s trial is due to conclude next week, after which he will be escorted out of the country at the end of February.

And from there, it will be very interesting to see what mischief these two salmon rebels make for the industry back home.

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Willful Blindness and Sick Salmon – Lessons from Cohen Commission

Oceans, Salmon Farming and Aquaculture, , , ,
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The mystery of the disappearing wild salmon may be closer to being solved due to the reconvened Cohen Commission and the extraordinary three days of hearings held in December, 2011. As earlier testimony revealed, many environmental factors affect the survival of wild salmon but imported diseases from the aquaculture industry may be the largest single cause of their decline. A plausible scenario now explains how these diseases could have arrived in our West Coast ecology.

Evidence now confirms that government policy supports the salmon farming industry, and that the industry has been willing to exploit this advantage to win regulatory concessions for its economic gain – in the words of one Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) official, the industry seemed “to dictate” policy. These concessions included relaxed importation, inspection and quarantine of Atlantic salmon eggs, and inadequate supervision of fish health.

Summary statements written by Gregory McDade and Lisa Glowaki, two of the lawyers representing Alexandra Morton at the inquiry, describe how DFO failed to pursue evidence indicating that ISAv was in wild salmon, despite an independent 2004 test that suggested all Cultus Lake sockeye were infected. “Instead it buried the results completely for seven years,” notes the summary, and “decided to not test any further wild salmon. This reaction is not consistent with the scientific method or a precautionary approach – rather it shows action of a political nature – denial and suppression of an inconvenient fact. In legal terms, it is known as willful blindness, also characterized in some circumstances as gross negligence.” This opinion is reinforced by DFO’s failure to submit any ISAv documentation to the Commission.

McDade and Glowaki suggest that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) was also implicated in this scheme of “willful blindness”. It had no interest in the well-being of wild salmon per se; its mandate was to monitor diseases and promote the economic value of food products. Fish diseases were inconveniences that complicated this commercial objective. ISAv was a reportable infection that would have alerted trade partners and the international community to risk, thereby incurring trade damage. “Safe trade” is the subject of testimony given by Dr. Kim Klotins, a senior CFIA official, to Krista Robertson, a lawyer acting for First Nations:

Robertson: “But is it also part of the mandate of the CFIA to ensure that… trade interests of Canadian companies or companies operating in Canada such as Norwegian fish farm companies, are not harmed by any kind of finding or allegation of disease?”

Dr. Klotins: “So if, let’s say, we do find ISA in B.C. and all of a sudden markets are closed, our role [CFIA] is then to try to renegotiate or negotiate market access to those countries. Now what it will be is a matter of they’ll let us know what the requirements are. We’ll let them know what we can do and whether we can meet that market access. If we can’t meet it, then there will be no trade basically.”

In other words, the discovery of ISAv in BC wild or farmed salmon could be an economic disaster that could even end trade in fish products. The CFIA didn’t want to find ISAv, and the evidence suggests it took active measures to confiscate fish samples that indicated ISAv was here. DFO – which supported the salmon farming industry – didn’t want to find ISAv either, and took active measures to hide findings and suppress research that would have exposed it. And the salmon farming industry certainly didn’t want to discover ISAv in its brood stock or net-pens – such a discovery would have had devastating environmental, market and public relations ramifications.

So, why did salmon farmers not find ISAv in their testing of more than 4,700 samples of farmed fish? The sole veterinarian testing their fish was Dr. Gary Marty, who noted more than 1,100 instances of lesions that were commensurate with ISAv, but he always recorded negative results for the viral infection. The industry, therefore, could confidently announce, as it frequently did, “that the ISA virus has never been found in British Columbia” (Times-Colonist, Dec. 16/11).

McDade and Glowaki explain this puzzle. First, not all ISAv strains are lethal so salmon farms might not notice high mortality. Like an influenza, it can exist as a low level infection that only becomes virulent when it mutates – particularly in high population densities at fish farms and hatcheries. But ISAv does impair fish health – especially wild fish in stressful survival conditions – and it leaves identifiable cellular markers. This is what the genomic specialists Drs. Kristi Miller, Fredrick Kibenge and Are Nylund found in their independent sampling of wild salmon tissue – they couldn’t find it in farmed salmon because the industry thwarted efforts to test these fish.

Was the salmon farming industry concealing evidence of ISAv? Not exactly. The following is the McDade and Glowaki technical explanation: “The evidence is now clear that Dr. Marty was conducting PCR tests with no confirmed validity. His PCR test was developed in-house, by a master’s student. This methodology used a primer that was different from that approved by the OIE or by the Moncton lab. It was a primer that had never been through the validation process, nor even apparently a peer-reviewed publication. Dr. Kibenge testified that in his opinion this test would not be sensitive to finding ISA.” So the “self-invented” test had no validity and “in our respectful submission, this ‘non-disclosure’ is tantamount to deliberate deception”. Since the salmon farming industry didn’t want to find ISAv, DFO had chosen to be “willfully blind” by relying only on the invalid testing of this single lab, and the CFIA was contented to avoid the complexities of discovering ISAv, no such disease was ever found by anyone responsible for detecting it.

The ISAv evidence will eventually be weighed by Judge Bruce Cohen. But the virus is now in the realm of public awareness, and the seismic effects could eventually shake the salmon farming industry, the wild fishery, and the government agencies that were supposed to be safeguarding an invaluable marine ecology.

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Salmon Politics and the Egg Trade

Fisheries, Oceans, Salmon Farming and Aquaculture, , , , ,
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The source of the infectious salmon anemia virus (ISAv) now being found in BC’s wild salmon is almost certainly from imported Atlantic salmon eggs, the international trade that has provided coastal salmon farms with most of their stock. The salmon farming industry, of course, is still denying that ISAv is here, although evidence given at the Cohen Commission’s extraordinary three days of hearings on December 15th, 16th and 19th essentially obliterates that defence.

Of four labs testing for ISAv in wild fish samples, the only one seemingly unable to find it is the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s facility in Moncton, New Brunswick, a lab whose detection capability is known by experts to be notoriously insensitive and inconsistent – an inaccuracy compounded by attempting to use degraded tissue samples. Research tests by a reputable lab in 2004 found 100 percent infection in Cultus Lake sockeye – inexplicably never pursued by federal agencies responsible for the health of wild salmon. Testimony from Dr. Kristi Miller showing genomic markers in archaic samples of BC wild salmon indicates that ISAv has been here since 1986.

Documents presented at the Cohen Commission suggest that the arrival of ISAv coincides with the early importation of Atlantic salmon eggs to West Coast salmon farms. Supporting this connection is a recorded litany of warnings from experts in BC’s Ministry of Environment (MOE) and the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO), all alarmed about the inherent danger of importing exotic diseases to the West Coast ecology through Atlantic salmon eggs. This evidence is worth noting.

  • 1982: representatives of Canada’s government meet with Norwegian and Canadian business interests to consider “alternative approaches to inspection and certification of salmon culture facilities” for the importation of Atlantic salmon material from Norway.
  • 1984: Canada’s DFO approves limited importation of Atlantic salmon material, an event that is not announced publicly.
  •  1985: 300,000 eggs are imported, subject to a “Draft Importation of Salmonids Policy” requiring a 12 month quarantine. But Dave Narver of MOE expresses concern to his Assistant Deputy Minister about the policy. “I am getting increasingly anxious about our importing of Atlantic eggs,” he writes. “My concern is shared by many of my colleagues in both provincial and federal agencies. The fish health measures agreed to jointly by DFO and ourselves in the fall of 1984 are not foolproof. They are based on statistical sampling, so we are taking a risk when it comes to the introductions of virus. That means a risk to the nearly one-billion-dollar wild salmonid fisheries of British Columbia.” An additional 130,000 Atlantic salmon eggs are imported from Scotland.
  • 1986: Narver reiterates his concerns to Pacific Aqua Foods about an unsigned and non-public policy. “We are deeply concerned with the fact that the risk of exotic diseases is dependent on both the number of imports and their size. Government has made a commitment to support aquaculture, but surely not at the risk of a nearly $1 billion resource in the wild salmon fisheries of British Columbia. The direction the aquaculture industry wants us to go will insure that we import unwanted diseases that can impact on government hatcheries and wild stocks.” Narver sends a similar letter of concern to Stolt Sea Farm Canada Inc. “To start with a general comment, I am disappointed with what appears to be the prevailing attitude of a number of companies, that fish health regulations to protect wild stocks are great, but if we continue the way the aquaculture industry seems to dictate, we can expect to introduce new diseases.” 1,144,000 eggs are imported from Scotland.
  • 1987: Federal-Provincial Policy for the Importation of Live Salmonids is signed, but quarantine time is reduced to 4 months to reduce the industry’s cost of dealing with waste water. Pat Chamut of DFO expresses a trade concern. “If challenged in court over denial of any imports, what is the legal likelihood we would be successful in denying imports?” 1,281,000 eggs are imported from Scotland and Washington State.
  • 1990: Salmon farmers in the US claim Canada’s import restrictions are a trade barrier. Chamut reiterates his concerns to the Policy Division of Pacific Rim and Trade. “Continued large-scale introductions from areas of the world including Washington State, Scotland, Norway and even eastern Canada would eventually result in the introduction of exotic disease agents of which the potential impact on both cultured and wild salmonids in BC could be both biologically damaging to the resource and economically devastating to its user groups.”
  • 1991: Numerous warnings are written by DFO and MOE officials, all concerning the dangers of importing diseases from foreign salmon eggs – a danger compounded by trade agreements allowing the salmon farming industry to import larger numbers of eggs. Narver’s letter from MOE to DFO is typical for 1991. “The proposed revisions not only open the window indefinitely but essentially allow for unlimited numbers of eggs. I know your Department argues that this has to done to avoid a Free Trade ruling.” Subsequent to these warnings comes a 1991 letter from BC Packers’ Director of Aquaculture to DFO. “As we have no other disease-free source available [other than Iceland] anywhere in the world, I am requesting that you reconsider your position, particularly in the light of the expected change in the DFO regulations.” Regulations are duly relaxed and from 1991 to 2010 at least 23 million eggs are imported into BC waters, mostly from sources other than Iceland.

This evidence from the Cohen Commission confirms that international sources of eggs were known to be rife with disease and that the aquaculture industry was perfectly willing to import these eggs, despite known risks and repeated warnings. Given trade agreements and the political leverage of the salmon farming industry to reduce precautionary regulations – the direction it “seems to dictate”, in Dave Narver’s damning words – the arrival of ISAv and other exotic diseases in BC’s marine ecology was inevitable.

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Don Staniford is in the battle of his life with Norwegian salmon farming giant, Cermaq-Mainstream

Salmon Activist Draws Outpouring of Public Cash for Legal Battle

Oceans, Salmon Farming and Aquaculture,
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If money talks, then the geyser of financial support that has sprung in the past few days for salmon activist Don Staniford’s legal defence speaks volumes. Staniford – who has been described by aquaculture trade media as salmon farming’s “public enemy number one” – is being sued by the world’s second largest farmed salmon producer, Oslo-based Cermaq (operating as Mainstream in Canada), for defamation. The trial, expected to run 20 days, begins today at the BC Supreme Court in Vancouver.

The company, whose biggest shareholder is the Norwegian Government, may have been banking on Staniford submitting to its demands out of court due to a lack of funds to pursue the case – but any chance of that happening disappeared over the past weekend when the activist raised over $20,000 in public donations for his legal battle. Staniford has been building his case, giving depositions and collecting evidence over the last several months but only went to the public for funding this past Friday, when he launched a page on the community fundraising site gofundme.com. Since then, as of this printing, over $11,000 have tumbled in – in contributions that range from $10-500 a pop, most of them being in the $30-50 region. The goal of the gofundme.com campaign is to raise $50,000 in total.

On top of those online donations, a Norwegian fishing group, The Wild Salmon Warriors of Norway, announced this morning it was kicking in 60,000 Norwegian Krone ($10,000 CAD) of its own. As the former director of the global Pure Salmon Campaign, Staniford frequently traveled the world of the aquaculture industry, drawing together an international alliance of over 30 groups and coalitions battling the industry in Norway, Scotland, Ireland, Iceland, Chile, the United States and Canada. (Full disclosure: I’ve worked with Staniford on the Pure Salmon campaign – including my film “Farmed Salmon Exposed” and other initiatives over the years).

Staniford has already received $20,000 in legal funding from West Coast Environmental Law – directed toward his lawyer David Sutherland, an expert in defamation law. The injection of up to another $60,000 would be an enormous boon to Stanford’s case, which revolves around a recent campaign of his targeting the open net pen salmon farming industry.

The campaign employs a series of graphical representations resembling a cigarette package – emblazoned with messages similar to surgeon general’s warnings, such as “Salmon Farming Kills” – to highlight problems with the industry. Cermaq’s defence is based on the notion that statements like these, coupled with the cigarette iconography, give the impression that farmed salmon is hazardous to human health. Staniford’s counsel will likely counter that the implication is salmon farms kill things like seals and sea lions (often shot by salmon farmers to prevent predation of their stocks) and wild salmon, through the incubation and transference of sea lice and diseases by farmed to wild fish. Moreover, it will make the case that the analogy to the tobacco industry derives from comparable approaches to denying science that is critical of industry.

According to the Canadian Press, “The company’s trial brief states it’s seeking $100,000 in general damages, $25,000 in punitive damages and a permanent injunction to stop Staniford from writing, printing or broadcasting defamatory words against Mainstream.” (emphasis added) It’s that last piece – the concept of a lifetime ban from speaking out against the company – that has Staniford determined to fight. In a recent Victoria Times-Colonist story on the case, Staniford told reporter Sean Sullivan, “This is about justice for wild salmon and freedom of speech.”

Clearly, this David-and-Goliath battle has captured the public’s attention, as the dollars roll in to support Staniford’s case. But it’s Cermaq that sees itself, ironically, as the David in this battle. According to CP, spokesperson for Cermaq subsidiary Mainstream Canada – the second largest fish farm operator in BC – “[Laurie] Jensen said the company is playing the role of David. ‘I think we’re on the righteous end of things in that we have to defend ourselves,’ she said. ‘If we don’t, we do a disservice to our communities, our partners, our employees.'”

For his part, Staniford appears ready for the duel. Further emboldened by this outpouring of public support, he claims, “I am going to fight until the bitter end and win.”

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Salmon Virus Cover-up About Protecting Markets, Not Fish

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Judge Bruce Cohen obviously thought that recent evidence of the Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISAv) in BC’s wild salmon was serious enough to warrant a reconvening of his Commission of inquiry into the mysterious disappearance of Fraser River sockeye. The three days of exceptional December hearings were revelatory, confusing and clarifying. We have ISAv in BC waters but we don’t have disease. We have different labs getting positive and negative test results on the same fish samples. We have critically important research curtailed just when such vital information is most needed. We have intimations of openness in a practice of obstruction and censure. And we have huge financial benefits accruing to corporate interests if BC’s farmed and wild salmon can be marketed free of the stigma of disease.

The salmon farming industry has been habitually skewing information to bolster its practices and image – it’s been doing this for decades. And, as recent history has revealed, the credibility of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) has been compromised by its conflicting mandates of managing wild salmon and promoting salmon farming. Now we discover that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has its own conflicting mandates of suppressing pathogens while enhancing marketing opportunities for fish products. Consequently, when a viral disease is reported and the commercial value of fish is threatened, the CFIA assumes a defensive position by questioning the findings of the testing labs, by re-testing the degraded samples of infected fish with its notoriously inaccurate technology, and then recording “inconclusive” results as “negative”.

This strategy is evident in an e-mail from a CFIA executive, Joseph Beres, to his colleagues, congratulating them on a conference call to the media that was intended to quell concerns about allegations of ISAv in BC salmon. “It is clear that we are turning the PR tide to our favour,” he writes, “and this is because of the very successful performance of our spokes at the Tech Briefing yesterday…Congratulations! One battle is won, now we have to nail the surveillance piece, and we will win the war also.” This is the response of a promoter concerned about reputation and market, not the response of a scientist concerned about the danger of an ecosystem-threatening virus.

This might explain why the CFIA didn’t submit to the Cohen Commission evidence of ISAv in more than 100 wild salmon a decade ago. And why DFO advised its molecular geneticist, Dr. Kristi Miller, to curtail her research on ISAv – precisely the opposite of how prudence and science should respond to such an urgent situation.

Indeed, the Cohen Commission has exposed a systemic history of closeted secretiveness, hidden motives and contrived deception, all exposed since the initial October revelation that ISAv has been found in wild BC salmon. Dr. Sally Goldes, a 17-year fish health section head for the BC Environment Ministry, testified during the reconvened Cohen inquiry that “current Canada Fish Health Protection Rules do not provide a high level of regulatory security against the introduction of ISAv into British Columbia.” To underscore her concern, she noted, “If you really look closely at the regulations, from a scientific basis, there is not the high degree of protection that the government, and particularly DFO, states that they have.” In her opinion, the DFO and CFIA press conference that announced no ISAv in BC “was entirely premature.” In other words, ISAv could have leaked into BC waters from Atlantic egg sources used by salmon farms, and government agencies are systematically hiding that possibility.

Dr. Kristi Miller, one of the key DFO scientists in this process, took the initiative to do her own testing on wild and farmed salmon. She concluded that an ISA virus, or something that is 95 percent similar to the strain afflicting farmed Atlantic salmon in Norway, Scotland, Maritime Canada and Chile, is present in BC waters. And her review of DFO’s archival fish samples shows that markers for ISAv have been present in BC since 1986 – shortly after Atlantic salmon were first farmed here. A study by Dr. Molly Kibenge suggested that ISAv was here in 2004. Despite a UN convention that requires “evidence or suspicion” of ISAv to be reported, this was never done. Neither was evidence of ISAv reported to the initial phase of the Cohen Commission hearings.

Complicating the issue is a technical definition of “disease”. The CFIA takes the position that a suite of characteristics are needed to classify ISAv as such. Dr. Miller recognized this criterion in her testimony to the Commission when she said, “And obviously we have not established that [ISAv] causes disease.” Without evidence of dying or debilitated fish, there is no “disease”. But evidence does exist. A postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Miller, Brad Davis, notes ample data suggesting “that the virus is causing enough damage to elicit a strong response in salmon…. Therefore, we cannot at this point assume that this virus does not cause disease in these fish.” Regular reports cite adult Fraser River salmon inexplicably dying as they migrate upstream, sometimes just days before spawning. Cultus Lake salmon have long been exhibiting the same strange behaviour. Until now, no explanation has been available.

The CFIA has pledged to investigate by subjecting 7,700 salmon to more than 20,000 tests over the next two years. But this does not promise to clarify the mystery of BC’s disappearing wild salmon. The CFIA’s self-declared “surveillance objectives are to determine the absence/presence of three diseases of trade significance… [and] to support international trade negotiations by making [a] disease-freedom declaration that will stand international scrutiny.” If the CFIA’s version of science is to start with a trade-friendly conclusion and then research to support it, this does not bode well for BC’s wild salmon and the entire marine ecology founded on this iconic fish.

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Salmon Activist Don Staniford Squares Off With Norwegian Fish Farmer in Court

Oceans, Salmon Farming and Aquaculture,
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Read this story from The Canadian Press on anti-salmon farm activist Don Staniford’s legal battle with Norwegian Government-owned Cermaq, which operates in BC as Mainstream Canada. (Jan. 7, 2011)

His outspoken criticism has earned him an appearance at the Supreme Court of B.C. on Jan. 16 where he must defend himself against allegations from Mainstream Canada, the province’s second largest salmon farming company, that he defamed the organization.

The case could cost him $125,000 if he loses.

The defamation case is the second Staniford has faced in the province since 2005 and the third major legal fight of his 18-year international campaigning career.

“It’s definitely a stressful situation,” said Staniford, who is a native of Merseyside, England, near Liverpool.

“It’s obviously gearing up for a fight. It’s not a physical fight but it’s a mental fight.”

According to court documents, the case focuses on anti-salmon farming campaigns Staniford initiated on or about Jan. 31, 2011.

In those documents, Mainstream Canada’s lawyer David Wotherspoon alleges Staniford disseminated and published defamatory and false statements about the company under three titles: “The Salmon Farming Kills Campaign”, the “Silent Spring of the Sea,” and “Smoke on the Water, Cancer on the Coast.”

Read more: http://ca.news.yahoo.com/fierce-fish-farm-opponent-remains-defiant-face-b-100013817.html

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Vancouver Sun Op-ed: Fraser Sockeye Dying of Politics

Canada, Fisheries, Oceans, Politics, Salmon Farming and Aquaculture, , ,
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Read this op-ed in The Vancouver Sun by Dr. Craig Orr and Stan Proboszcz of Watershed Watch, which provides a compelling summary in the wake of the Cohen Commission of the political dynamics threatening Fraser River sockeye. (Dec 27, 2011)

Sockeye are plagued by a lack of food, lax pollution standards, ineffective habitat protection efforts, archaic water laws, harmful hydro impacts, unjustified riverbed mining, a “modernized” Fisheries Act, illegal fishing, subpar catch monitoring, and debilitating climate change. Unlucky Oncorhynchus nerka must also swim a gauntlet of non-selective nets, predators, toxic algae blooms, and pathogen-bearing fish farms — all for an increasingly slim chance to spawn and die.

If these stresses weren’t troubling enough, the federal review of Fraser sockeye woes recently reopened to testimony about positive tests for the infectious salmon anemia virus (ISAv) in wild and farmed salmon. Indeed, despite vigorous government assurances to the contrary, compelling evidence suggests this virus has been here for some time. Governments’ reaction to the news — and to leaks that they had known of a possible virus for nearly a decade — prompts one to fear that wild salmon ranked disturbingly low on their list of priorities.

Reaction to reports of a virus associated with salmon farms predictably meant strident denial among Canada’s regulators, followed by something more insidious. Governments seemed less inclined to act on disease and public concerns, and more intent on firing back at the scientists who reported ISAv positives. Judge Bruce Cohen was told scientists felt “intimidated,” “attacked,” and “alienated.” Samples were seized, methods publicly questioned, labs audited. Fisheries ministers unleashed media releases chastising highly accredited academics for “reckless behaviour” and “unsound science.”

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/op-ed/Fraser%20sockeye%20being%20hung%20politicians/5916281/story.html?mid=56534

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Rafe Reflects on Common Sense Canadian – And Why 2012 is Make-or-Break Year for BC

Canada, Energy and Resources, Mining, Oceans, Pipelines and Supertankers, Politics, Salmon Farming and Aquaculture, WATER, Western Canada, , , , , , , , ,
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It’s customary at this time of the year too look back, comment, and look to the New Year. Why should The Common Sense Canadian (CSC) be any different?
 
We’ve been going for about a year and a half so my comments may take us a little earlier than last January but let me start by saying that both Damien Gillis and I are pretty proud of our progress.
 
Neither of us believes in some commonwealth of environmental people and groups. That’s not practical as we all have issues we feel more strongly about than others. We do, however, like to feel that we can bring a vehicle into being that helps all environmentalists and groups find a place to air their feelings. As one would expect, the particular passions of Damien and me will stand out in the work we do but we also support many other groups. Because of the history we bring to the CSC, we tend to look most in four areas, in no particular order: fish farms, private power, pipelines and oil tankers – the latter two being bound together but still two separate issues; but you can’t have one without the other.
 
What we’ve seen happen in the past year or so is a sense of all environmentalists feeling part of the same general battle – and battle it is.
 
Let me expand on that last thought a bit. All of us, whether trying to save forests, or a river, or a coastline or whatever are met with the cry “aren’t they in favour of anything?” If they’re not hugging trees they’re against jobs for the young and prosperity for communities. These and similar questions have been raised since the first day someone declared that there were other issues than just monetary ones. To show you how ridiculous this gets, supporters of the proposed “Prosperity” Mine allege that this mine will give employment to 71,000 people! Why not 710,000 if you’re going to be ridiculous?
 
What we try to do is challenge people to make a value judgment on what is done and place the environmental issues securely on the table. The main reason we do that is that damage to the environment is permanent while the economics diminish as time goes by, leaving only the scars.
 
Let’s look at a so-called “run-of-river” project. We’re told that these are necessary to create jobs yet when the deed is done there are only a bare handful of caretakers left behind while the river, and the ecology that depend upon it, are permanently and seriously impaired.
 
Now we are democrats. If the public, fully informed, wish to create permanent environmental damage, that is their right. What happens, however, is that the public, if they are informed at all, only see the glitzy ads by the company and the smooth assurances of the politicians.
 
Public hearings are, frankly, bullshit. The decision has been made and, like a trial in the old Soviet Union, a “show” trial must take place.
 
Let me give you a recent example: when President Obama refused to authorize the Keystone XL project which would take “gunk” from the Tar Sands to  Texas, Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty instantly responded and said that we would have to put the proposed Enbridge pipeline from the Tar Sands to Kitimat, BC, on “the front burner”! Before the National Energy Board hearings even get off the ground the Finance Minister is assuming the result! Yet, he’s right to do so because the “fix” is well and truly in.
 
This takes me to the meat of the matter for, in the past couple of years there has been an astonishing cooperation of environmental organizations to fight these things together.
 
I’ve been all around the province making speeches and often the stage has been shared with COPE union spokespersons, the Wilderness Committee, Alexandra Morton and her Raincoast Research Society, the redoubtable Donna Passmore and her work on highways and farmland issues, CoalWatch Comox Valley regarding the proposed Raven coal mine, citizen groups fighting local issues like overhead transmission lines and numerous grassroots organizations in the Kootenays in Northern BC, on the Sunshine Coast – and the list goes on.
 
Of enormous consequence has been the work all the different environmental groups have done with First Nations on the issues I have mentioned. One of the most touching moments in my Roast of November 24 last were the speeches given by Grand Chief Stewart Philip, Chief Bob Chamberlin and Chief Marilyn Baptiste; and I tell you truly that I wept when they spoke and sang and considered how far down the road to true understanding of their concerns I had come – something, I might add, Chief Philip commented upon with a twinkle in his eye to match my tears.
 
Let me pause here to note that I have left out many people and organizations that have every right to stand out in front as those I have mentioned and I deeply hope that I haven’t offended any of them.
 
Let me speak out clearly on political matters. The Campbell/Clark government are enemies of the public at large. The destruction they have caused, and which will happen because of their policies, beggars description. Not unnaturally, the NDP have been the beneficiaries, often accidentally, from this public disgust with the government. I can tell you that at my “Roast” were people I knew from my old Socred days – people who a year ago would have preferred to be found in a house of ill repute than be seen with the CSC helping us in our fundraiser.
 
I must say this: the NDP gets no easy ride from us. It’s simple to jump on a bandwagon but we demand commitments from them – not airy, fairy crap that passes for commitment in political jargon.
 
I’m going to end now with this look ahead. 2012 will be the year that decides where we go in BC.
 
Will we have more rivers destroyed for private profit? Will we see our province, my homeland and yours, turned over to the 100% certain destruction by pipelines? And to the 100% certainty of catastrophic oil spills on our coast and in Burrard Inlet? Will we continue to allow fish farmers to annihilate our sacred Pacific Salmon? Will we watch idly as Fish Lake is destroyed to set the precedent of more of the same?
 
Will we do nothing as we lose more and more farmland? Will money promised and jobs pledged suck the wind out of our ability to see what’s really happening to us, our children, our grandchildren and for some of us great-grandchildren?
 
That is the advantage, you see, of old age – right before your eyes are the people we hold BC in trust for. The wisdom of the ages, in the soul of our First Nations, is the wisdom we must listen to and apply if we want to save our province from those who would convert it into cash for private use, leaving us with nothing but the scars to remind us what damned fools we’ve been.
 
The Common Sense Canadian will be in this fight in 2012 and in the years to come and, along with those we march alongside, do not intend to lose the battles nor the war.

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