BC Fish Farms Should Come to Land - BC Salmon Farmers Association - John Paul Fraser

Hi John Paul Fraser

I am writing to suggest that the Association seriously consider moving onto land in BC, rather than staying in the water.

As you know, Minister Jordan closed the Discovery Island fish farms last week. More closures are promised.

This is because of the overwhelming negative perception of in-ocean fish farms. CHEK did a poll the other day that showed 81% of BC residents want fish farms out of the water.

My understanding is that about 85% of BC’s output of 85,000MT is sold in the USA.

What you may not know is that the on-land US industry is growing to be six times larger than the BC industry. You won’t be able to sell your product in the US as consumers want environmentally sound product. See: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2020/11/on-land-fish-farms-in-usa.html.

Here are a few players In the US, that will produce almost 5 times BC’s output: Atlantic Sapphire is aiming for 150,000MT and 260,000MT in the long run; Whole Oceans aiming for 10,000MT at first but aiming for 50,000MT; Nordic Aquafarms aiming for 33,000MT; Aquabanq 10,000MT; Aquacon 45,000MT; Pure Salmon aiming at 20,000MT, but with global plans for another 260,000MT. There are another 25 smaller on-land farms from 50MT to 500MT in the USA. In BC, Whole Oceans signed a long-term lease for the Kuterra on-land plant, so you could talk with them about their plans.

My list of on-land fish farms has 340 on-land fish farms around the world. The reality is that on-land has become commonplace: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2016/05/152-different-on-land-fish-farm-systems.html. I would say that every week or so a new on-land project is announced. And the on-land industry produces a million tonnes of fish.

Just so that you know, I read 30 global fish farm/seafood industry newsletters each week, and have done so for years. I am up to date on global fish farms.

DC (Dennis) Reid
*************** Here is another 30,000MT coming to Maine by 2024: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.com/2020/12/good-news-post-dec-14-2020.html. American Aquafarms.

Wild Salmon/Fishing Revenue is 630% Higher Than Salmon Farms - BC Salmon Farmers Association Tries a Different Claim

I sent a note to an environmental list serve in BC. BC Fish Farmers got hold of it and sent themselves the references to the stats that they like. By all means go look at them. The BC Stats are better, and someone forwarded their spin, er, note, my way.

Here is my note:

Hi Sabrina Santoro, Media Person at BCSFA:

Regarding your note to fish farms  below: I use the BC Stats report of 2013 because it has the best stats on sport fishing, fish farms, etc. It starts with DFO and Stats Can and then refines the figures, presenting a far different take from DFO and fish farms.

See BC Stats: http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/StatisticsBySubject/BusinessIndustry/FisheriesAquacultureHuntingTrapping.aspx. 

You will note DFO on the cover, as it is their document, though they have never used the figures - part of their conflict with fish farms. I have read the documents that you note below, but BC Stats is better.

See my post: Salmon Fishing Revenue Towers Over Fish Farm Revenue, which has had high traffic since you sent your note: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2015/05/salmonfishing-revenue-towers-over.html. 

In addition, Sabrina, I do considerable work to come up with statistics useful to the subject, for example, you like to claim that employment is 6,000 jobs, while I have derived that actual employment is only 820. That is how you get to the number that real jobs are only 13.7% of what fish farms claim, about one in ten.

And I also give in my post how to calculate the entire fishing revenue of $2.52 Billion and thus that it is 630% higher than fish farms.

This means that the main claims of fish farms that they are about jobs and revenue are, well, false. Workers lose jobs worldwide, and revenue goes to shareholders worldwide. Even Marine Harvest concedes that fish farms have few jobs, because the process is highly automated: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2016/09/worker-job-numbers-worldwide-marine_27.html.

One more thing Sabrina: Other hard work subjects include: the sewage cost to BC taxpayers of $10.4 Billion - we don't want to pay; and 5.76 Billion forage fish killed to bring in one harvest of an industry the size of BC’s. Fish farms don’t save fish, they kill fish, more than 100 dead fish to feed one farmed fish to harvest, and those farmed fish also kill 50% of wild salmonids, worldwide.

It makes no economic or environmental sense for fish farms to be in the ocean. They need to be on land. It makes no sense to raise a carnivore.

DC (Dennis) Reid

                                                           **************

Now, Sabrina's note:

Hi Everyone,

In response to the email below, please refer to BCSFA's Economic Impact Study, as well as the Socio-Economic Impact of Aquaculture in Canada document by DFO and the Government of Canada’s Agriculture and Seafood Industry and Sector Profiles. 

Cheers,

Sabrina

bcsalmonfarmers.ca. Sabrina Santoro Communications Manager sabrina @bcsalmonfarmers.

News Releases & Media Contact - BC Salmon Farmers Association

bcsalmonfarmers.ca › news-releases-medi...

BCSFA Media Contact; Sabrina Santoro; 604- 202-4417; sabrina@bcsalmonfarmers.ca. The BCSFA makes commun

Norwegian Fish Farm Disease and Lice Costs

Two recurrent themes in fish farm environmental damage are: disease losses and out of control sea lice and their associated diseases.

See: http://www.undercurrentnews.com/2015/03/02/norway-salmon-farmers-q4s-confirm-sea-lice-as-key-driver-in-2015-supply/.

You judge for yourself::

1.      February 2015, Rabobank analyst Gorjan Nikolik suggested sea lice management will continue to define the global salmon picture this year.

2.      In 2015, Chile is once more constrained by its own biological situation.

3.      In Norway: Capacity growth is hard to come by... will involve managing all sanitary conditions, including pancreas disease (PD) and amoebic gill disease (AGD).

4.      In Norway, Marine Harvest: spent on sea lice problems: NOK 53m in Q1, NOK 80m in Q2, NOK 74m in Q3 and NOK 96m in Q4, for a year total of NOK 303m, or $40m.

Comment: The cost of seal ice chemicals was 70% higher than in 2013.

5.      Marine Harvest noted: NOK 199m… relating to sea lice mitigation and extraordinary mortality. [Pancreatic Disease and Amoebic Gill Disease].

6.      Salmar had: a challenging situation with respect to salmon lice and PD” in its central Norway region.

7.      Norway Royal Salmon: production cost was still high as a result of costs associated with AGD and PD.

8.      Norway Royal Salmon: was indicted by Norwegian government over misrepresenting sea lice numbers.

9.      Grieg’s costs were up: as a result of lice treatment, and mortality due to gill disease in Shetland, as well as fish that had been affected by PD in Norway's Rogaland region.

Then go back and read this post, a study that says one third to one half of global aquaculture product is lost to diseases. That was 2002, and in 2015, disease and lice are still big killers. All of this could be eliminated by on-land fish farms, and no exposing of wild Pacfic salmon to lice and disease from fish farms: 

Escaped Farmed Salmon/Trout in Norway

A major new report has tallied up the losses of salmon and rainbow trout from escapes in the country where fish farms started - Norway. Marine Harvest, Cermaq and Grieg Seafood that operate in BC all originate in Norway.

What are the losses? If you can believe it, 16.3% of of farmed salmon and 18.3% of rainbow trout escaped from fish farms.

These companies operate in BC. If they lose fish at the same rate they do in Norway, the roughly 48,000,000 BC farmed salmon (80 farms times 600,000 fish per farm) that would mean 7.68 million farmed fish would be lost in BC every year.

That is a huge number, exceeding losses in Chile - typically 4 million per year, also far below the numbers from Norway. Something wrong is happening in Norway.

Read the science: http://www.mattilsynet.no/fisk_og_akvakultur/fiskevelferd/tap_av_oppdrettsfisk_kartlagt.15427. 

Harper Government Dismantling Canadian Government Science Resources, Updated Dec 26, 2013

This Tyee article is a very good summary document of many of the actions taken by the Harper Government (as Harper likes to call it) to dismantle our federal government science capability that Canadians have paid and continue to pay for: http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/12/23/Canadian-Science-Libraries/?utm_source=daily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=231213.

It starts with the issue of closing the science library in Winnipeg, and then goes on to list toward the bottom many of the other steps the Harper Government has taken in the past year or so. Such items include gutting the Fisheries Act of environmental clauses, doing the same to the Environmental Protection Act. firing scientists and other actions.

If you look back in these posts, the Royal Society put out a stinging indictment of the government's lack of action on our three coast oceans in 2012: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2012/02/key-document-royal-society-of-canada.htmlhttp://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2012/02/key-document-royal-society-of-canada.html.

Critique: Mary Ellen Walling Letter to Victoria Times - Kibenge

This post contains three items: DC Reid article in the Times Colonist Newspaper, Mary Ellen Walling letter to the Times Colonist Newspaper, and my critique of Mary Ellen Walling's letter.

This is the DC Reid article:

Wild BC Salmon Lose Disease Doctor

A very important negative event occurred recently with the World Animal Health Organization (OIE) pulling Dr. Fred Kibenge’s status as the only disease reference lab in the western hemisphere for testing fish diseases, particularly, ISA from farmed Atlantic salmon.

I asked the OIE several times for the origin of the complaint but received no response. While news releases have pointed to complaints from other countries, the other factor is that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), discredited in the Cohen Commission testimony in December 2011, has made representations to the OIE to pull Kibenge’s status. In testimony they were cornered into admitting their interests are the export possibilities of the largely Norwegian-owned farms over natural wild salmon, a clear conflict of interest. Dr. Kim Klottins said the CFIA didn’t want to find ISA in BC. The video is not pretty.

You will have recently read in the TC that they tested several thousand wild salmon – not farmed fish, the source of the Atlantic Ocean diseases, ISA and HSMI – and announced they found no ISA in BC. That should be a good thing because the two diseases could well lead to the demise of all eleven Pacific salmonid species from California all the way to Korea. But it is not a good thing.

Drs. Miller (DFO, Nanaimo), Kibenge (PEI) and Nylund (the only other OIE lab in the world, in Norway), have found ISA in BC wild salmon. During Cohen they discredited the DFO, CFIA and the BC testing systems. The CFIA and DFO use the Moncton lab under Dr. Gagne, and the experts found its procedures don’t find ISA and its equipment is poor; this means a negative response for the worst fish farm disease means nothing. These doctors have found literally tens of thousands of cases of ISA in BC, dating all the way back to 1988.

For instance, Miller’s work showed 25% of Clayoquot Sound farmed Chinook had ISA and HSMI. This means 125,000 to 250,000 fish per farm. There are 22 farms in the Sound and wild Chinook numbers are at extinction levels – only 501 fish in six rivers. The Kennedy Lake sockeye run, once the largest on Van Isle, is no more.

The CFIA is a member on the OIE council which has members from many nations. Kibenge was the lab that found Atlantic ISA, (Nylund showed it was taken from Norway), in Chile. In 2008, ISA wiped out quarter of a billion farmed salmon, a loss of $2 Billion, with 13,000 losing jobs. The CFIA with its $740 million budget apparently wants to control the narrative with respect to farmed salmon diseases in Canada, and so Kibenge lost his status as the place where wild BC salmon have been sent most frequently for testing by concerned BC residents.

I read a scientific study not long ago that says fish farms cause a loss of 50% of the wild salmon/trout where they are introduced, and this includes BC. There are, for instance, only 6,000 wild Chinook spawners on the entire west coast of Vancouver Island. You will recall the Georgia St. coho fishery tanked in the 1980s. Then there are the Owikeno sockeye in the 1990s, etc. Fewer wild salmon translates into fewer jobs in BC Stats data, for example, commercial employment is down 50%. The largest sector, sport fishing, could likely employ more people, too. 

This is the Walling letter:

Re: “Loss of wild-salmon disease doctor will have major impact,” July 16.

(1)In the column, the actions of the World Animal Health Organization in pulling the infectious-salmon-anemia reference status at Dr. Fred Kibenge’s lab are presented as a negative. In fact, the organization’s decision should be viewed as a positive one. The organization conducted an audit with an international panel of scientific experts and found a series of weaknesses affecting the quality of diagnoses performed at the lab — which led to the unanimous decision by the general assembly of the organization to delist the lab.

(2). This news should reassure the public, as it shows that labs carrying international designations are held to high standards.

(3)It is correct that several thousand wild salmon were tested and no ISA was found. Thousands of Atlantic salmon have also been tested for ISA and those tests were also negative.

(4) ISA is a concern for B.C. salmon farmers — it has the potential to have an impact on our industry. That’s why our fish are tested and why we support ongoing wild- and farmed-fish monitoring programs.

(5). All the world’s oceans are connected, so it makes sense that viruses that have been found in other areas might eventually be found in B.C. That’s why ongoing monitoring of both wild and farm-raised fish is important so if a virus that causes disease, as not all do, does appear, it is found quickly and can be dealt with
.
Mary Ellen Walling
Executive Director, B.C. Salmon Farmers Association
Campbell River

Here is my Critique:

(1). The only evidence of complaint is the CFIA letter to the OIE. The CFIA told me only one other country complained.  And, of course, the CFIA, DFO and BC testing systems were shown to be deficient. 

(2). The Kibenge lab is the one that determined the Chile ISA infection and Nylund showed the ISA came from Norway. The subject only became public after Aqua Gen who transported eggs to Chile sued Nylund for bad science. They lost.

The big Norwegian companies have taken ISA to virtually every country they have gone to set up shop. The usual scenario is refusing to accept that ISA has been taken, with, once it is found, saying, well we just have to live with this. The problem in BC is the world's greatest salmon resource, the entire Pacific Ocean  is under threat of extinction, something that has never happened before.

Tragically, ISA is now in NS, NB and NL, as well as in BC - Miller, Kibenge and Nylund have found hundreds of thousands of cases of ISA in BC

(3). The DFO, CFIA and BC testing systems were all discredited by Miller, Kibenge and Nylund during the Cohen Commission.

(4). All the testing systems have been discredited. The BC public are right to be concerned with all wild salmon being killed by farmed diseases. Salmon farms can be eliminated from the ocean in two months by pulling their leases.

Also, the public is pretty appalled when I tell them that fish farms get reimbursed with taxpayer dollars - up to $30 per fish - by the CF|IA

(5). This is a classic fantasy generated by fish farms. Marine Harvest, Cermaq Minstream and Grieg Seafood, all Norwegian origin firms, are well aware that ISA, HSMI and other diseases are carried by imports of eggs and fry, both horizontal and vertical transmission of disease - not carried by the ocean tens of thousands of miles. That's just silly. 

Fish farms sure complain when environmentalists come anywhere close to their sites under quarantine, even though they are hemmorrheging 65 Billion viral particles per hour into wild BC salmon waters. 

Go read the Spinwatch.org article on how they neutralized a Science 2004 study that showed cancer causing chemicals and other persistent organic pollutants were in Scottish, and other country, farmed fish. It reads like a Hollywood thriller conspiracy blockbuster - link in several articles on this site. You will not believe any claim by a fish farm company ever again.

See Spinwatch link:: http://www.spinwatch.org/index.php/issues/health/item/141-spinning-farmed-salmon-part-3-of-3