Newfoundland Against In-Ocean Fish Farms, Calls for On-land

Here are two things:

1. A follow-up note from me, showing that Grieg (talking about Placentia Bay NL) is being 'disingenuous' when calling for public support money. They don't need a bean, and they know it; and,
2. The original note from  Fred Griffin, Bill Bryden and the New Foundland (NL) orgs against fish farms. It went to a very long list of CCs.

Here is the note from me pointing out the 'disingenuous'  Grieg Seafood:

1. DCR:

Hi All

I should add to this that Grieg’s saying the $45 million is necessary for the project to go ahead is simply being disingenuous. In their own country, Norway, licenses for in-ocean pens ended two years ago when the government got so fed up with in-ocean degradation, it started giving out free ones to start on land.

The auction price in the market of a licence in saltwater was $9- to $12- million each, versus zero. That means they are receiving a very large benefit to set up in our ocean and pollute it, and getting a huge freebie ($9 - $12) X 11 = $99 to $132 million for the 11 licences alone.

That means, adding the $45 million, that it is a huge benefit to Grieg of $144 to $177 million of which they would have to spend every last cent in Norway, if indeed they could get into the ocean they so badly fouled.

Grieg is counting on Canadian politicians and bureaucrats not to have done their basic homework and realize they are being duped. It really is this bad: Grieg knows Canadian politicians are nitwits.

DC (Dennis) Reid

See my blog: www.fishfarmnews.blogspot.com.

2. Here is the Griffin/Bryden note:

To all:

"How can Canada avoid the problems Norway is experiencing with open net pen salmon farming"?

First of all find some intelligent, strong willed and common sense  politicians and bureaucrats who will not be bought, bullied, persuaded, sweet-talked and twisted by a greedy and corrupt industry.  This applies to the federal DFO and the DFA's of BC, NB and NL.  The proposal by Grieg to install a $250 million mega farm and provide $45 million of taxpayers dollars to destroy the ecology of Placentia Bay and likely destroy their wild salmon population is beyond imaginable.  What is going on in Nova Scotia is also a horror story.  Cooke aquaculture owes the NS government $16 million from a scrapped deal with the previous government.  The government has dismissed recommendations from the Doelle/Lahey report, approved expansion for Cooke and just announced a further $17 million to further grow the industry.  Can you believe this if fisheries officials were to read ANYTHING about the disasters occurring in other countries?

Find some intelligent, honest and strong willed politicians who will take the trouble to read and become informed of the disasters that are occurring in Scotland, Chile, New Zealand, China ----and as identified in Norway.  Apparently Fisheries officials are not required to become keep themselves as up to date on Aquaculture as the general  public.

Find some intelligent, honest, dedicated politicians and bureaucrats in the Dept's of Environment to recognize that this is a serious environmental problem and stop throwing it all back to Fisheries.

Find some intelligent, honest and strong willed politicians and bureaucrats who will respond to the thousands of letters, e-mails and calls providing indisputable evidence of pollution, disease, cage smashups, beach and ocean floor fouling, excessive sulphide, methane, escapes,  mass mortality, damage to wild fish and risk to other species.  

Find some intelligent, honest and strong willed financial people in government who will stop paying multi-millions of taxpayers money for dead fish and for capital assistance to greedy and corrupt companies who have no intention of using the money as intended.

Secondly find some honest scientists who won't be bribed with the almighty and ill-gained dollars into compromising the truth about the poisons, pollution, disease and corruption in this industry.

Find some dedicated and strong-willed politicians and bureaucrats in the Health portfolios in both Ottawa and the provinces to recognize the health risks from the open pen farmed fish.  Residual toxins from chemical may be hazardous to unborn babies and young children.  The presence of PCB and dioxin can be 20 times that allowed in meat products.  Food health organizations have identified open pen farmed fish as one of the top foods to avoid.

Find a Supermarket chain with the intestinal fortitude to ban open-pen farmed fish from their shelves.  One chain which will go un-named was contacted through their director of sustainability, showing interest in expanding their sales of closed containment land based fish.  Next thing a country wide promotion of open pen fish from sponsored by an un-named company was announced.  THE MARKETPLACE MUST BECOME FULLY AWARE THAT THESE PRODUCTS ARE NOT FIT FOR CONSUMPTION. 

Convince the media to accept that this issue as an environmental, health and consumer issue, requiring investigative journalism into the corruption and collusion between the industry and government.  Fifth Estate, Marketplace and W5 have all received comprehensive information about all that is wrong with the industry and the governments that support it with no response.

After the blind eyes, closed minds and deaf ears of government in this country have opened to the reality of this deplorable mess,  then and only then will they begin to recognize that the money wasted on the greedy and corrupt open-pen industry can be spent wisely expanding, enhancing and otherwise supporting closed containment land based salmon farming.

Fred Giffin

BSc. Acadia University

Sent from my iPad

On May 17, 2017, at 2:44 PM, Bill Bryden <newfoundlander_1@hotmail.com> wrote:

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/dan-lewis2/salmon-farming_b_9385446.html

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Ending Open-Net Salmon Farming Is The Only Way Forward ... www.huffingtonpost.ca Norway's salmon farming industry is hitting a wall. Because salmon farming began earlier there than in B.C., I wanted to get a glimpse of where we might be headed if ...

A clear consensus emerged over the two weeks in Oslo, Bergen and Alta, through meetings with wild salmon advocates, academics and journalists. When asked the question "How can Canada avoid the problems Norway is experiencing with open-net pen salmon farming?" without hesitation every single person we asked replied: "Shifting to closed containment production is the only way forward."

This was written by Dan Lewis, part of the group that went to Norway from Clayoquot Sound.