Farmed Salmon – Good for you and your family?

I was absolutely appalled to see a full page promotion in your January 29th Vancouver 24 hrs for BC Farmed Salmon.  Not only was it a large advertisement, but you featured a 24 hrs chef with a recipe that called specifically for BC Farmed Salmon.  Considering some of the excellent coverage your newspaper has given to the state of wild salmon and the environmental damages that the salmon farming industry continues to cause, I cannot understand why you would print such a piece.  You should know better.

In a 2008 study by Ford and Myers, data was collected before and after aquaculture was placed in 5 regions and was compared exposed and non-exposed populations in similar regions.  This study found that in multiple locations in Canada and Europe, the presence of salmon farms reduced wild salmon survival by more than 50% per generation.  This is largely due to the sea lice which are allowed to breed in fish farms and interact with wild outmigrating juvenile salmon, but also due to bacterial and viral parasites spread by the same means.  We’ve had outbreaks of IHN and BKD here in BC, as well as the Kudoa parasitic worm that goes largely unstudied and which has been completely avoided by the media.  Over 20,000 jobs were lost in Chile after Norwegian imported salmon eggs brought the highly virulent Infectious Salmon Anemia Virus.  There is nothing to stop industry from bringing this virus to BC water which would wreak havoc on our coastal ecosystems in addition to the farm industry.  Escaped Atlantic Salmon are also competing for food and spawning ground with wild salmon, and are also spreading disease.

Eating farmed salmon causes a depletion of natural resources, as more wild ‘feed fish’ is used to produce them than you get back in ‘product’ at the end.  That’s what happens when you try to raise a carnivore in captivity.  In addition, the chemical treatments including dyes, antibiotics, and delousing treatments are extremely dangerous and unhealthy for humans as well as the natural environment.  SLICE has not been tested nor is it approved by the Canadian government for the type of application that it is being used on these food products.

The industry is directly and indirectly killing marine mammals that get too close to net pens.  Flat fish around farms are consistently found to have high levels of tumours, lesions, and eye parasites which are indicators of pollution and contamination.  Shellfish aquaculture beaches, including those used by First Nations for thousands of years are being shut down as the shellfish become polluted and toxic, always after a fish farm is put in close proximity.

As you are well aware, the salmon farming industry in BC and around the world is far from sustainable and healthy, and a swift move to closed containment is required to reduce the environmental and health impacts before it becomes a sustainable alternative.  Until such time, I sincerely hope to see no more promotion of this industry in your newspapers.  Doing so is simply undermining the environment, economy, culture, and safety of our province.

In the meantime, I hope you will correct the information that you published on Friday, indicating clearly to the public the problems being caused by farming salmon.