Thursday 19 May 2016

BC Citizens Beat Marine Harvest and DFO - DFO Blinks on Diseased Fish Court Case

More than 15,000 British Columbians have sent a letter to DFO Minister Hunter Tootoo to stop the Harper-era court case that would have allowed Marine Harvest to put diseased, exotic Atlantic Salmon in BC waters, imperiling wild Pacific salmon.

Marine Harvest and DFO were appealing a case that struck this down last year, won by Alexandra Morton, and Ecojustice that prevented diseased fish being put in pristine BC waters.

DFO blinked, get this, on Friday the 13th, May, 2016.

See the Leadnow site for the letter: http://www.leadnow.ca/wild-salmon/.

For comment, see: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2016/05/case-adjourned-dfo-blinks.html.

DFO has put the case on hold by asking for an adjournment. Good for the Liberals to recognize that BC does not want fish farms in the ocean anymore. Even Norway where, MH, Cermaq and Grieg Seafood are from doesn't want them fouling their own ocean and is giving out free on-land licenses, a $9- to $12-million subsidy, compared with the in-ocean auction price.

Now we want Trudeau and Tootoo to get the farms out of BC waters, and put them on land or they can go back to Norway and set up on land. And can they just answer why DFO is still left with its conflict of interest, siding with Norwegian fish farms against BC wild salmon? The Cohen Commission told them to stop and just get on with wild salmon.

To give you an idea of just how recalcitrant fish farms are in Norway, Marine Harvest has applied for 28 licenses to put in offshore farms where their problems cannot be checked easily. See the news story, item 484 on my News Bites Post: 484. Boom Bust Cycle - Boom, Marine Harvest, Norway, applies for 28 offshore cage licenses, where environmental damage is hard to assess: https://www.undercurrentnews.com/2016/05/17/marine-harvest-in-offshore-cage-development-bid-28-license-applications-now-submitted/?utm_source=Undercurrent+News+Alerts&utm_campaign=bc48325714-Europe_briefing_May_17_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_feb55e2e23-bc48325714-92426209.

My News Bites post details the global news on problems with the fish farm/seafood industry, some 490 bad news stories so far - in less than a year. You will be sorely vexed: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/05/my-fish-farm-newsbites-post-that.html.


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