Tuesday 4 April 2017

Neoliberalism - Government Conflict of Interest, Norway, NIFES

Hi Justin/Dominic:

This article speaks for itself, taken from the Norwegian press, April 4, 2017: https://www.nrk.no/trondelag/brukte-ulike-deler-av-fisken-i-forskning-om-miljogift-1.13459496.

The article has been translated in better than Google-speak, so read it and know that the Norwegian press doesn't like fish farms. If Norway doesn't like fish farms, what does that tell you for citizens in the rest of the world? It tells you that nobody likes fish farms. They need to get out of the water and raise vegetarians. Justin, Dominic are you listening in the far off country of Ottawa?

"From 4 April 2017: "Hacking Research" [Norway]

"Researchers at the National Institute of Nutrition and Seafood Safety (NIFES) have used various parts of the fish to arrive at a conclusion that farmed Atlantic salmon has less pollutants than wild Atlantic salmon. It creates huge reaction and criticism.

By Marit Langseth, Journalist and Kjartan Trana, Journalist

- If we look at the study design that lies behind the results that have been made, so there are major deficiencies in it, and there are several things that are alarming, says professor of toxicology Anders Goksøyr, at the University of Bergen.

It caused a sensation when NIFES stated that farmed salmon has less pollutants than wild salmon. Now it turns out that the institute used different procedure between the wild and farmed salmon for the analysis, something NRK news has been investigating.

Whole fillets of wild salmon were used and only a select part of farmed salmon were sampled to make a comparison.

Goksøyr was shocked that different parts of the fish were used in the assay to compare wild and farmed salmon.

- In the wild salmon, they used whole fillet, while in farmed salmon, they only used part of the fillet called the "Norwegian Quality Cut" or NQC.

Theoretically, the section of farmed salmon contains less pollutants than the whole fillet of wild salmon used in the analysis. NIFES explains that they used what they had available for wild fish.

- Farmed salmon are part of an annual monitoring program where the Norwegian Food Safety Authority (FSA) takes samples of farmed salmon, with just the NQC cut. In the project on wild salmon, we had the whole fish available, says the head of the research project, Anne-Katrine Lundebye at NIFES.

- Would not it be desirable to have the whole fillet on both, so that the underlying data was exactly the same?

- Yes, but that is not what we here. It is very expensive analysis, so the sampling and analysis was already done previously, so we just used figures that were available.

Read also: - Irrelevant to compare wild salmon with farmed salmon Aggregate samples and individual samples

Goksøyr also reacts to the fact that there is no specified age specified for the fish used in the survey, when we know that contaminants accumulate with time.

In addition, he notes that in collecting samples of farmed salmon, they use an average of five salmon, while the wild salmon, they used single whole fish samples.

Lundebye explains that this is due to EU standards which samples were taken in collecting samples.

- While to know more about the variations between individuals, which we had the opportunity in wild salmon study, we analyzed the individual, she says.

Anne-Katrine Lundebye led research on toxins in wild and farmed salmon.

NIFES is linked to the Ministry of Industry and Fisheries Ministry. Fisheries Minister Per Sandberg said last year that the Institute of Marine Research (IMR) will be an aquaculture industry-friendly Institute, and the Institute will share the political ambitions of growth of the seafood industry.

- Is this what we face here?

- I do not have contact with the fishing minister, and will not say that this is business friendly. We have written an article based on the findings we found, says Lundebye.

Goksøyr will not comment on that, but points out that in other instances the approach used might would have had problems to publish such research."

Hmm. Garbage in, garbage out.

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