[All] FW: Emailing: News Atlantic Salmon Federation.htm Write the federal fisheries minister to demand change. Kirk

Thu May 17 22:42:15 EDT 2012

If you enjoy eating salmon...then you better read this 'happening' to our
salmon industry...GQ

From: Kirk Smith [mailto:kirk.smith at sympatico.ca] 
Sent: May-17-12 4:12 PM
To: Adam Johnson; Ari; Bill and Kerry; Donald Johnstone; Gene and Lianne;
Ginny Quinn; Hayley; Jenny; Jesse; Jo Anne Leyburne; Joanne Elliott; John
Witzke; John Pratt; dunbars_rule10 at hotmail.com; Lisa Wechzelberger; Matt;
Aunt Nancy and Uncle Doug; Pat and Brian
Subject: Emailing: News Atlantic Salmon Federation.htm Write the federal
fisheries minister to demand change. Kirk

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be caged

News

Salmon farming: an industry that needs to be caged

May 16th, 2012

Chronicle Herald - Letters

BY RALPH SURETTE

Serious salmon farming is coming to Nova Scotia. Wonderful news, you've
surely heard. Lots of jobs. A few people are against it, of course, but this
shouldn't be a problem - just come-from-aways fretting about the views from
their fancy properties.

If that's how you understand it, think again.

Salmon farming has gone from being a good idea on a modest scale to a
pernicious excess worldwide involving noxious chemicals, harm to wild
fisheries, lavish taxpayer subsidies and unwholesome government/industry
collusion.

What's coming to Nova Scotia is what's going awry elsewhere. The recent
wipeout of salmon farms in Shelburne Harbour by infectious salmon anemia -
after the entire industry in Chile was similarly wiped out - may have perked
your attention. The fact that you, the taxpayer, will be paying to restore
the operation should perk it even more.

Nova Scotia is late to salmon farming. Our bays are becoming available
because of global warming. The fish in the first operations 35 years ago
often froze. We have time, in other words, to do it right. Alas, the
government, even as it prepares an aquaculture strategy, is giving little
indication of that. Applications for cages have been rubber-stamped;
regulations run over; a vast coalition of opponents from the commercial
fishery, tourism, sports fishing and others wanting a moratorium on open-pen
aquaculture until it's all worked out can't get the time of day from
government, and so on.

Nova Scotia is the next phase of operations for Canada's salmon farming
multinational, Cooke Aquaculture, the largest in North America, which is
finding things tricky in its main operations in New Brunswick. Ditto for
Loch Duart, bursting out of Scotland, that wants to set up in Eastern Shore
bays and inlets.

In New Brunswick, Cooke is up for trial on 72 counts of dumping illegal
substances after a two-year investigation into dead lobsters by Environment
Canada in the salmon farming areas of the Bay of Fundy. Cooke CEO Glenn
Cooke and two other executives are named. Penalties are up to three years in
jail or a $1-million fine per count or both.

Plus this, from recent hearings of the Senate fisheries committee in Ottawa.
In 2010, the New Brunswick Fisheries Department OK'd the use of a powerful
chemical called AlphaMax against sea lice in the salmon cages, after some
cursory tests. Sea lice are a big problem, and they get progressively immune
to the chemicals used against them. 

They're also crustaceans, so poisons used against them will affect other
shellfish. Suspicious agents from Environment Canada showed up, put dye in
the chemical as it was being applied, and followed the plume as far as eight
kilometres out, immersing caged lobsters in it as they went. The lobsters
all died. A stop was put to its use.

Here's the kicker. The Harper government is gutting the Fisheries Act and
Environment Canada. In future, the committee heard, stopping such activities
will be harder, maybe impossible.

There are other problems.

The caged salmon industry trades on the image of the leaping wild salmon. In
fact, the nice pink you see on farmed salmon in the stores is food dye
("lucantin pink" from BASF chemicals or "carophyll pink" from Roche
pharmaceuticals). In some cases, there are antibiotics and hormones. There
was a bust-up in Britain this winter: cautions from health authorities, and
a headline in the admittedly over-the-top Daily Mail that proclaimed "pink
poison."

Aquaculture was meant to supplement declining wild stocks of fish. Mostly it
has. But in the case of farmed salmon, it takes four to seven kilograms of
feed to make one kilogram of salmon. The feed is fishmeal from herring
mackerel, anchovies, Arctic krill and others along the food chain. Thus,
it's far more destructive than helpful to the world's fisheries. Plus,
almost invariably, wherever fish farms appear, wild salmon stocks disappear.
The St. Mary's River and others of Eastern Nova Scotia are marked waters if
Loch Duart gets its way.

Not least, salmon cages are extremely polluting. It's like a sewer outfall
wherever they establish - from excess feed and feces and sometimes heavy
metals, like zinc and copper, from cage de-fouling agents.

And the promise of jobs is largely illusory. According to Susanna Fuller,
co-ordinator of the marine divisions of the Ecology Action Centre, even
within aquaculture, salmon farming is near the bottom as operations become
more automated. She has produced an analysis on behalf of the "responsible
aquaculture" coalition. It's available on the EAC website under "marine." It
was created for the benefit of government. "They weren't giving us any
information, so we gave them some," she says.

The coalition, which includes most of the commercial fishery, don't want an
end to salmon farming. They want it sustainable, an addition rather than a
detriment to the wild fishery - an end, for example, to "open-pen" farming
in favour of shore-based pens. The companies complain this is not
economically feasible. A big mouthful for an industry which, says Fuller,
has a 50 per cent rate of return and is stuffed silly with subsidies.

Ralph Surette is a veteran freelance journalist living in Yarmouth County.

If you have any comments on Atlantic salmon issues and coverage, or would
like further information, contact:

Sue Scott, V.P. Communications
1-506-529-1027
E-mail: sscott at asf.ca

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Newfoundlander Don Hustins Receives Salmon Conservation Award
<http://asf.ca/news.php?id=868&type=press> 
April 26th, 2012
ASF presented its top Canadian conservation award to Don Hustins on Tuesday.

Good News for the Economy <http://asf.ca/news.php?id=865&type=press> 
April 25th, 2012
Science Confirms Improved Salmon Runs in 2011 

 <http://asf.ca/news.php?type=press> > SHOW ALL PRESS RELEASES

Salmon farming: an industry that needs to be caged
<http://asf.ca/news.php?id=870> 
May 16th, 2012
A letter by Ralph Surette lays out the problems associated with open pen
aquaculture coming to Nova Scotia

Atlantic Salmon Numbers Encouraging - Giffin <http://asf.ca/news.php?id=866>

April 26th, 2012
ASF's Director of New Brunswick Programs discusses in CBC Video the positive
news about runs in the past two years.

 <http://asf.ca/news.php> > SHOW ALL NEWS

Halifax Smoked Salmon Reception and Movie Screening of the
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May 30th, 2012

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September 26th, 2012

Montreal Dinner <http://asf.ca/events.php?id=84> 
September 27th, 2012

Ottawa Dinner <http://asf.ca/events.php?id=83> 
October 17th, 2012

 <http://asf.ca/events.php> > SHOW ALL EVENTS

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