Globe and Mail - BC Farm-Raised Salmon Advertisement, Nov 5, 2014, Page S3

The BC Salmon Farmer’s Association continues to make assertions about open-net fish farms that don’t agree with the science. It is surprising the industry, lead companies including the Norwegian, Marine Harvest, Cermaq and Grieg Seafood, uses the same spin they have been doing for decades and simply ignore the evidence.

My guess is the timing of the ad is just before the federal government will announce the aquaculture activities regulations that allow fish farms to continue using the ocean as a free open sewer and even further allow them to release other chemicals, not to mention, as some pundits taking DFO to court put it, they will be allowed to kill wild salmon.

This is a race to the bottom because fish farms like to say they operate under the strictest laws in the world, and then behind the scenes argue to get rid of them. In the past year, fish farms have made the claim in Chile, Scotland, Norway and Canada.

The claim is false because every country has its own laws. And in Canada the laws have already been weakened. The Fisheries Act S-35, and S-36, were gutted last year along with the Canadian Environmental  Assessment Act, 2012: https://www.ceaa-acee.gc.ca/default.asp?lang=en&n=16254939-1. Enforcement staff numbers are too low and 200 scientists have been laid off.

Look at the index to my blog and you can find the references to the points I am making: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2014/10/index-to-wwwfishfarmnewsblogspotcom.html. I summarize 20,000 pages of fish farm environmental damage science.

I will walk you through the ad as I see it and you can draw your own conclusions. Bold faced material is the ad.

Ad: BC Farm-Raised Salmon: Globally sustainable, Ecologically smart.

Well, no. Sustainability usually refers to feed sourced from non-fish sources – salmon are carnivores. However, the industry has contributed to the great decline of small fish – that could be food for third world human beings – and really has no choice but to change. Chile’s anchovy stocks were eliminated by the industry there, mostly the Norwegians.

Now, with declining stocks of mack jack mackerel, as well as anchovy stocks off Peru, the protein sources for fish feed are changing. For example, EWOS, is now using increasing amounts of chicken feathers in its feed. Do you want to eat chicken feathers? These have been shown to contain an array of pharmaceutical fluoroquinolones.

Other feed companies are now in pristine Antarctica waters fishing down the food chain by stripping the ocean of krill, which supports the entire chain, even baleen whales.

Then of course there are the disease and lice problems; that farm fish have such high fat content it is higher than pizza; and, PCBs, Dioxins and POPs, some of which cause cancer. In Norway the big news this year is scientists and doctors telling people not to eat farmed fish because of the cancer causing chemicals in it – largely from fish meal. One third to one half of all aquaculture products are lost to disease every year: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2012/05/fish-farms-infect-wild-bc-salmon-may-13.html.

Also, seven of 10 chemicals no longer work on fish farm lice in Norway. Sustainable? I think not.

And no to: Ecologically smart. In-ocean fish farms are old-tech dinosaurs that refuse to come out of the water because they can use it as a free open sewer. The smart solution of putting fish farms on land, the industry persistently refuses to do (even though neighbour, Denmark, already has pulled 50% out of water). Among other articles, look at the Shepherdstown, Virginia conference on closed containment, on-land, recirculating fish farms that took place in September 2013. There are easily 50 science presentations on getting fish farms out of the water. See the Tides Canada post in: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2013/11/key-document-land-based-closed.html.

In fact, the public who live with fish farms in their waters want them out. The articles on my index will lead you to citizen protest in BC, Atlantic Canada, Scotland, Ireland, Chile, Tasmania and Norway itself. In BC, more than 100,000 people have signed a petition to get fish farms out of our waters: http://www.change.org/p/restore-wild-salmon-ban-salmon-feedlots-in-bc.

Oh, and, do note that my preliminary estimate of the sewage put into public waters, that taxpayers bear the cost of, is $10.4 billion in BC alone. In Scotland and Norway itself the indexed references show that farmed fish produce more sewage than the entire human populations of those countries. Eco smart? I don’t think so.

See the new Regs: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2014/07/new-aquaculture-regulations-in-canada.html.

And the Skuna Bay fish farm in Nootka Sound BC show another non-eco point. They did what was done in Scotland: continue and continue to claim it is a special system of environmentally sound and organic fish. And what happened? They killed 65 sea lions, the males reaching a ton, by drowning them in their nets. They were fined $100,000.

Ad: How will the world feed a population projected to grow to nine billion by 2050?

Well it certainly won’t be through fish farm fish because they are too expensive for those in third world countries to buy. They are only sold in rich countries. In Chile for instance, the anchovy stocks should have been used to feed the people, not made into fish feed. And the disease problems led to a collapse of the industry in 2008 putting 13,000 to 26,000 third world employees out of jobs and the loss of a quarter of a billion diseased dead fish.

Ad: Salmon are the most efficient eaters on any farm – land or water.

What fish farms don’t tell you is that their estimates of 1.1 – 1.3 kilograms of feed to produce 1 kg of farmed fish, is that it is a comparison of dried out fish feed. The more commonly accepted comparison is four to five pounds of actual fish to produce one pound of farmed fish. Not so efficient. And do look at the hog comparisons from Carolina.

Ad: Farming efficiency is critical for the future of our food, water, and land.

As above, fish farms are only marginally efficient because they don’t have to carry sewage treatment costs. As far as I know, no other form of farming is allowed to dump sewage into another person’s property or the public’s air or water. When that cost is added in, the revenue and jobs pale in comparison.

Ad: And farming salmon is one of the most climate conscious of all farming practices. 

What this merely means is that farmed salmon can only be produced in cold water. They cannot be produced in most of the world that has warm water.

Ad: with the smallest carbon footprint. 

Again, when you add the sewage costs in, the carbon footprint in many countries is as much as all the sewage of all the human beings in the country. In BC, for instance, my estimate of $10.4 billion comes in at the same sewage cost, and sewage volume equivalent, as for 4.8 million British Columbians – the total population is 4.6. Any expansion will make the carbon foot print much larger than all the human sewage.

Ad: Salmon farming in BC accounts for $800 million toward the provincial economy and generates 6,000 jobs in coastal communities.

Sorry, wrong again. Fish farms and Fisheries and Oceans Canada have been using these incorrect figures for a long time. The only good statistics out there are put out by BC Stats. See this post for the summary figures and link to the study: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2013/02/sport-fishing-how-we-tack-up-feb-6-2013.html.

The contribution to the BC economy from all of aquaculture (mussels, oysters, clams, seaweed, etc. and farmed fish combined) is a very small $61.9 Million. DFO knows this as its name is on the front cover of the report.In fact, the commercial, processing and sport industries comprise 90% of the sector’s contribution to the BC economy, more than $600 million. 

And that 6,000 employment? BC Stats figure is much smaller at 1,700 – and this is a multiplier number of jobs across the entire economy. It is the only trustable figure out there. Oh, and fish farming has been stagnant in the recent past. And its only market is the States (85% of its product) because Canadians won’t eat farmed fish. It may well be put out of business by its own parent companies that have had a 26% tariff eliminated in the States, and by floating a money raising bond in the USA to set up there – the only real market for BC.

At the same time, the commercial sector has lost 1,700 jobs. In other words the evidence suggests that fish farming does not add anything to BC jobs because it simply eliminates jobs in other sectors. In BC, 50% of wild salmon have been eliminated since fish farms set up shop. See: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2013/01/fish-farms-kill-more-than-50-of-wild.html.

And just so that you know, DFO did not like the 1,700 multiplier job number, so it scaled it up by 250% to 3,900. So that and the 6,000 number are simply bunk.

And the kicker to this is that I ferreted out the actual number of fish farms jobs in BC. It is only 795 actual jobs. This is only 13.25% of what the industry claims.

So fish farm jobs and revenue numbers are far lower than claimed, and the environmental damage is excessive. I have a table where I have collected 70 fish farm systems, mostly on land around the world, comprising more than 8,000 actual fish farms that are on land. See: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2012/01/key-document-34-mostly-on-land-closed.html.

Go look at all the references. You will come to the conclusion that fish farms are not good for BC, Canada or the world. They need to come out of the water or go back to Norway.