TC: Fish Farms Coming to Land?

Hi Carla Wilson

I sent the following note to the TC a few days ago.

I should add that both Mowi and Cermaq are making plans for on-land fish farms in Europe. So, why do they claim here in BC that it is not possible? This is just part of their spin.

See: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2020/12/good-news-post-dec-14-2020.html. Mowi: 837, 836. Cermaq: 832. Leroy: 833, 837. Note that I have found over 800 global press articles, nothing short of an avalanche, on on-land fish farming. It is false to say it cannot be done. I have a list with over 350 actual on land fish farms around the world.

See: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2016/05/152-different-on-land-fish-farm-systems.html.

When one is reporting the news, one has to use industry figures, even when one knows they are untrue. But for analysis, look to the BC Stats Report to do the stats. As noted, industry claims 1500 jobs for Discovery, but using the govt’s own figures, it is only 212.

The other thing, and not something mentioned below, is that Norway, where Grieg et al are from, raises 10 times the farmed salmon than in Canada with a tenth of the employment because of automation. When they bring that here, almost 80% of jobs will be wiped out in BC and on the east coast.

See this and note the Inka Milewski text on employment and automation: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2019/07/fish-farm-problems-on-global-scale-inka.html. Read the Milewski paper on employment and the social indicators.

DC (Dennis) Reid

D

From: dcreid@dcreid.ca Sent: February 21, 2021 1:41 PM To: DC Reid ; tips@cheknews.ca; letters@timescolonist.com Subject: Sunday Feb 21/21 Article: Federal Plan to Close Fish Farms

Dear TC Editor

Fish farm companies have known for almost a decade since the Cohen Report that the Discovery Island fish farms were going to be closed in 2020. They had all that time to make changes, rather than come to the end of the line and say it is premature.

And for them to say that the closures will result in 1500 job losses is false.

On a metric tonne basis and the BC government’s own figures in the BC Stats Report, the actual jobs lost is only 212, and that is peanuts. Here is how you calculate the figure: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2021/01/another-sleepless-night-thousands-of-bc.html.

What is needed now is a DFO retraining program to transition in-ocean workers to on-land workers.

I would also make the on-land licenses zero dollars, while raising the in-ocean license to $1M to start and then move to the Norway numbers that these firms know well is an auction amount of $32- to $40-million range.

In addition, the feds should make a $1M transition grant to land for every in-ocean fish farm closed. Alternatively, they should lease Crown Land at zero cost for the first few years, to foster on-land fish farms.

Just so that you know, the reality is that the in-ocean BC fish farm industry is going to be wiped out by the burgeoning on-land industry in the States because it will be six times the size of the BC industry. The global on-land industry is reaching 2-million metric tons, and consumers want environmentally sound product to eat. To claim anything different is also false and five years out of date.
T
he reality is that the fish farms need to come out of the water or they will be wiped out by on land, as the US is 85% of their market.

DC Reid

One final thing: Alex Morton has done a brilliant paper on Discovery skullduggery by DFO in the past decade, starting with more than 2500 pages of documents, some FOI. See: https://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2021/02/how-a-minister-tried-to-protect-salmon-but-we-lost-a-generation-of-fraser-sockeye.html?fbclid=IwAR0hfWD2qLRDxu6I1nb01AcOVSKcJ8lo4neT7yXlQNKi2F-3Cfp9GpKzeSA.