Tag Archives: Salmon

DFO boss defends draft aquaculture regs

September 2, 2010UncategorizedSalmonCommon Sense Canadian

Article by Dan MacLennan in the Campbell River Courier-Islander. “The finfish aquaculture regulations are woefully inadequate to protect wild salmon”, said Brian Gunn, President of the BC Wilderness Tourism Association (WTA). “They do not address the impacts that open net cage salmon farms have on the wild salmon stocks. For example, there are no requirements in the current proposed regulations for the salmon farming industry to monitor the health of juvenile wild salmon for impacts due to disease and sea lice around farms during their out migration. In fact there is little in the proposed regulations to protect wild salmon. DFO seem to have forgotten what should be their primary mandate, which is to protect our wild fisheries.”
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B.C. sockeye salmon bounty estimate upped to 30 million

August 31, 2010UncategorizedGlobe and Mail, SalmonCommon Sense Canadian

Article by David Ebner and Wendy Stueck in the Globe and Mail. “Warmer ocean water is believed to have reduced the amount of food for sockeye, and colder water recently might have helped this year’s massive run. The proliferation of fish farms on B.C.’s coast has been blamed for spreading sea lice, and other diseases that prey on young sockeye.” Read article

GM salmon may go on sale in US after public consultation

August 26, 2010UncategorizedSalmonCommon Sense Canadian

Article by Chris McGreal in The Guardian. “The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a 60-day period of consultation and public meetings over whether to permit a GM strain of salmon to be eaten by humans, even though it has been called a ‘frankenfish’ by critics.” Read article

Paddle for Wild Salmon starting in Hope

August 15, 2010UncategorizedSalmonCommon Sense Canadian

Article by Jennifer Feinberg in the Hope Standard. It’s about a five day paddle down the Fraser River that starts on October 19. Read article

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Damien Gillis, Gilad Atzmon, Janine Bandcroft

July 30, 2010UncategorizedAudio, SalmonCommon Sense Canadian

MP3 of radio program on CFUV in Victoria. Read article

Canucks star defenceman joins the salmon protection brigade

July 30, 2010UncategorizedSalmon, The TyeeCommon Sense Canadian

Article by Robyn Smith in The Tyee. “Vancouver Canucks defenceman Willie Mitchell is the latest star to voice support for the protection of British Columbia’s wild salmon and the move towards closed containment farming, joining William Shatner in a growing cast of celebrity salmon defenders.” Read article

Farmed salmon fail organic test

July 30, 2010UncategorizedSalmon, Times ColonistCommon Sense Canadian

Letter to the editor by Chris Genovali of the Raincoast Consaervation Society in the Times Colonist.

“the B.C. fish farm industry relies on the application of the agricultural drug Slice to address chronic sea lice outbreaks.

“Emamectin benzoate is the active ingredient in Slice, which is administered in feed. The use of Slice is a concern to scientists like David Carpenter, professor at the environmental health and toxicology division at the University of Albany in New York. Carpenter has said that ’emamectin is one of a class of drugs known to block a major inhibitory neural transmitter in the brain. Animal studies have demonstrated exposure to this chemical during development causes changes in behaviour and growth as well as pathological changes in the brain.'”

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Alexandra Morton’s response to Proposed Federal Aquaculture Regulations

July 29, 2010UncategorizedSalmonAlexandra Morton

July 28, 2010

Ed Porter, Team Leader, Regulatory Operations
Fisheries and Oceans Canada
PAR-RPA AT dfo-mpo.gc.ca

Dear Mr. Ed Porter:

I am responding to the 60-day public comment opportunity on the proposed Federal Pacific Aquaculture Regulations
http://www.gazette.gc.ca/cg-gc/about-sujet-eng.html
(left column “Part I Notices and Proposed Regulations” Vol. 144, No. 28, page 1933).

When BC Supreme Court ruled that the federal government must take over regulation of salmon feedlots, the intent was to bring the industry into compliance with the Constitution of Canada. But what Stephen Harper’s Conservatives are trying to do instead is remove safeguards established by previous governments and open the door to privatizing the ocean, which is prohibited by the Canadian Constitution.

With his document Harper not only licences massive ecological damage, he depreciates the market value of BC feedlot salmon. No reputable retailer can afford to be seen with a seafood product raised under a licence to “harm, alter, disrupt and destroy” the ocean. The federal licences will be issued without consultation with First Nations.

“Increasingly stringent international standards are driving seafood importing nations to require Canada to certify health (disease) status, not just food safety, of live aquatic animals and their products. ? Canada cannot meet these standards, and is facing increasing challenges to export market access. Canada is already subject to a lesser market access than the United States, Europe …” http://www.gazette.gc.ca/rp-pr/p1/2009/2009-12-19/html/reg1-eng.html

Canadian pathologists warn against holding millions of diseased salmon in pens (Traxler et al. 1993) and the graph below demonstrates the reason. There is a strong correlation between salmon feedlot epidemics and the declining Fraser sockeye. This must be examined, but the provincial government is stonewalling release of salmon feedlot disease records and Harper is stepping in to help.

These draft regulations ignore the International (OIE) and the Canadian Food and Health Inspection Agency standards by exempting salmon feedlots from full disease reporting. Harper is not only offering Norwegian companies the right to leave infected salmon in the water, he is protecting them from liability. If government and the industry are willing to throw away premium market value for disease secrecy we are warned this is a dangerous and strong priority.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is also offering these Norwegian companies blanket authorization for “Harmful Alteration, Disruption or Destruction” of fish habitat (Section 35(1) Fisheries Act). This ignores the value of the oceans to communities across British Columbia. Oddly, these rules will not apply to eastern Canada, where the Minister of Fisheries resides.

Harper is going to legalize destruction of wild fish that become trapped in the pens, attracted by the bright lights and food in the water. There are no surplus wild fish and so this by-catch will compete with fishing quotas. Many feedlots are in rock cod conservation areas where fishermen are not allowed, but the feedlots will continue trapping unknown amounts. This is bad management and will affect herring, sable fish, salmon, lingcod and other important wild fish.

The federal Conservatives are proposing salmon feedlot licences be granted and amended without environmental assessment. This violates strong public demand for healthy coastal waters, but neatly resolves the irreconcilable issue of dumping over a ton/day/site of industrial waste into salmon habitat. These are the only feedlots that never have to shovel manure and chemical waste as it flows conveniently into public waters.

It is dangerous to humanity, (risking food security, drug resistance, disease mutation) to allow feedlots to contaminate natural environments with disease. Feedlots remove all the natural disease control mechanisms and thus allow viruses to mutate, multiply and jump to new species.

Because Mr. Harper is proposing to remove standards designed to protect the ocean from Norwegian feedlots, retailers like COSTCO will have to decide if their mission statements honor government or their customers. Promising to “Exceed ecological standards required in every community where we do business,” is meaningless if there are no ecological standards.

Salmon feedlots are an “ecology of bad ideas,” struggling to control disease with drugs, corrupting the foodchain by using warm-blooded animal products, plants and fish from the southern hemisphere as feed, displacing local businesses, turning a public resource into a corporate commodity with no public access, dyeing their fish pink to resemble salmon. If jobs were the goal, the federal Conservatives and BC Liberals would be working with the BC companies developing sustainable land-based aquaculture to create a viable, world-class product. Instead Mr. Harper is proposing to change the laws of Canada to allow unchecked pollution by a 92% Norwegian-owned industry associated wild salmon declines worldwide. Wild salmon are thriving everywhere this industry does not exist (Alaska, Iceland, western Pacific, areas of BC).

These proposed regulations are a signpost. If this was about fish, attention would have been paid to the market value of the product. Instead it risks one of the last naturally producing salmon regions in the world for a depreciating commodity. What these draft regulations do is clear away legislation established to protect Canadians and our coast from industrialization and privatization.

Ed Porter, the proposed Federal Pacific Aquaculture Regulations do not protect the interests of Canadians or the world and must not be adopted.

Sincerely,
Alexandra Morton

The Fraser sockeye decline began at the same time government failed to cull millions of IHN virus infected feedlot salmon on the Fraser River migration routes. Government ignored federal scientists who state infected Atlantic salmon should not be permitted in pens (Traxler et al 1993). The federal government also ignored warnings from their scientists that would have saved the North Atlantic cod. When the cod went extinct the Hibernia Oil wells appeared on the Grand Banks – the most generous food-producing area humanity will ever have was exchanged for oil.

Sign Alex Morton’s petition

Canwest’s avoidance of sea lice and river privatization

July 26, 2010WATERMedia, Salmon, Water and EnergyRafe Mair

Perhaps I’m a bit optimistic but I see the Canwest writers coming out, just a teeny bit.

If you had just arrived from Mars and looked at old issues of the Vancouver Province and the Vancouver Sun going back a decade you would never, for a moment, know that there have been any environmental issues in BC let alone the disastrous Rivers and Fish Farms catastrophe. In fact you would assume that Premier Gordon (Pinocchio) Campbell is a very popular politician. No doubt you would shake your head when you read the results of published polls and see the depths to which Mr. Campbell’s popularity has fallen.

You would see the odd article in the Sun by Scott Simpson on these two issues but they’re like letters servicemen send from war zones – enough to show concern but nothing specific about what’s really going on.

Mike Smyth in the July 25th edition of The Province goes much further in criticism of the Campbell government than at any time over the past decade. He talks of the cover-up of the BC Lotteries scandal, the screw-up of the HST, the muzzling of the Child Advocate, the privacy scandal, the Freedom of Information mess and the MLA expenses debacle.

Nothing about the government cover-up of sea lice stats, which should, but won’t, bring down the government!

Here we have an ongoing plan to desecrate our rivers so that BC Hydro can pay double what it’s worth to give BC Energy that it can’t use. From Palmer and Smyth, nothing. Zilch.

Here is an issue that presently has run to $40 BILLION! BC Hydro must pay for energy it doesn’t need, something that dwarfs the Glen Clark fast ferries fiasco without a comment from the intrepid Canwest political writers.

Here we have the fish farm issue, international in scope, with Alexandra Morton probably BC’s most tenacious fighter, on an issue she has taken up with the likes of the King of Norway, and it’s as if she weren’t there!

I sense this may have something to do with the fact that I’ve been on these issues – Smyth is mad at me big time. He has reason to be but that doesn’t excuse him avoiding issues because I’m on them.

Mike might answer that that’s not the reason, which puts me in mind of the lawyer in a southern courtroom (where things are a bit laid back) who, to the obvious displeasure of the judge, smoked a big cigar throughout the trial.

After the case was lost, the lawyer said to the judge “I think it’s terrible that you should decide against my client just because I smoked a cigar during the hearing”.

“That wasn’t the reason I found against you”, replied the judge.

“Well”, said the lawyer, “it’s a better reason than any you gave in your judgment”.

C’mon Mike, grow up!

Audio: Damien Gillis Discusses Clayoquot on CJSF

July 19, 2010UncategorizedAudio, SalmonDamien Gillis

Damien Gillis discusses the dire threats to Clayoquot Sound and other stories The Common Sense Canadian is following with CJSF’s Stuart Richardson. 17 minutes.