Nancy Greene Raine – Fish Farms? What About Wild BC Salmon? - April 27, 2014

I almost fell off my chair when I read that Nancy Greene Raine wants to triple the size of fish farming in BC: http://www.nanaimodailynews.com/news/nanaimo-region/aquaculture-projects-offer-huge-opportunity-1.922138. Taking such a position is badly out of step with what British Columbians want.

We want fish farms out of our pristine ocean and put on land, or they can go back to Norway. More than 100,000 British Columbians have signed a petition urging Premier Clark to refuse any expansion leases in BC: http://www.change.org/en-CA/petitions/restore-wild-salmon-ban-salmon-feedlots-in-bc.

I doubt Nancy Greene Raine knew this and probably needs time to gather independent information and think things over. As it is, she is out of step with the entire province. And I doubt she has considered how soiled her name will become if she gets on the fish farm side of this issue rather than standing with wild BC salmon.

There are only 50% of wild salmon left in BC since fish farms set up shop here. Does she want to be the name associated with the loss of wild salmon? I wouldn’t think so. This is the science: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2013/01/fish-farms-kill-more-than-50-of-wild.html.

In all fairness, I think she, and the other senators on the committee are just innocents and believe what DFO and fish farms tell them about jobs and revenue, rather than looking at the science themselves. See Gail Shea talk to the senators, Feb 25, 2014: http://www.cpac.ca/en/programs/in-committee-from-the-senate-of-canada/episodes/31236425/.

In the senate video, the three DFO ADMs make the case that the only thing that stands in the way of expanding the fish farm industry, is that the regulations on sea lice drugs need to be rationalized. And the Senators agree there should be nothing in the way of new jobs and revenue.

It also came clear that Swerdfager/Beven/Gillis have little knowledge of BC salmon. They suggest salmon are milling about in the ocean in any old place and when it comes to spawning time, they go to any old river. Only someone in Ottawa could be so out of touch – too bad it is DFO. And they ignore the many problems with fish farms.

For the record, salmon have set out-travel routes, grid like precision in the open ocean where they feed and set return-routes, and they not only come back to the same river, but spawn within 100 yards of where they hatched. And so on with succeeding generations.

That is why, for instance, that the Harrison component of the 100 subcomponent Fraser sockeye run is coming back in record numbers. Historically they returned at about 38,000, but now are nearing 400,000. This is because, unlike other Fraser sub-components, they migrate out to sea through Juan de Fuca Strait where there are no fish farms, rather than Johnstone where there are. They don’t get killed by fish farm diseases, or their lice and ocean survival has been good.

Now, back to Swerdfager et al. They suggest the only wrinkle is that lice chemical thing, and the senators agreed – it’s about jobs after all. But the ADMs didn’t let on that the Harper Government has already gutted the Fisheries Act and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and let go 200 scientists, many in BC. And they didn’t say what a huge problem that sea lice really are. The most recent example of many is Norway where lice are so resistant to pesticides, SLICE etc., that chemical use has gone up 80-fold in a decade. That’s how bad lice can be.

To be fair to Nancy Greene, in the beginning, I thought saving wild salmon in the ocean and feeding a hungry world sounded good, too. But then I started finding holes in the arguments. Instead of saving wild salmon, the science shows that fish farms kill them. And fish farm salmon will never feed a hungry world. That is because they cost too much, and can only be sold to first world consumers. In fact, in Chile, the industry destroyed the small fish in the ocean such as anchovies and jack mackerel, to feed their fish.

The anchovy should have been the protein for the poor mouths of the world, say Chileans, but they were fed to fish farm fish. Today, fish farms say they are moving on to ‘improve’ their feed, but do not acknowledge their role as important contributors to the massive declines – in other words they have no choice but to move on from fish-based feed. Today, boats are scouring the Antarctica, and down the food chain to catch krill for fish feed, if you can believe it. And off Chile the Asian fish farms are still scooping up what wild fish remain and taking them to Asian fish farms, largely prawns – the only industry dirtier than Chile’s fish farms. Read global news on www.thefishsite.com, for a while.

I am a citizen of BC and make no money out of this, but I became aghast at the deceptiveness and intransigence of fish farms around the world. I realized how bad fish farm companies were when I read an article on how they neutralized an article by Albany, New York, scientists – Hites et al, in Science, January 9, 2004 – on the cancer causing chemicals in farmed salmon – PCBs, dioxins, POPs and so on.

The article reads like a Hollywood movie, and it came clear to me that every claim fish farms make has to be ground proofed. Read this Spinwatch article: http://www.spinwatch.org/index.php/issues/more/item/139-spinning-farmed-salmon-part-1-of-3. It leaves you feeling you would not have believed corporate citizens could sink so low. See if they don’t remind you of tobacco CEOs.

And just so that you know, the Hites group has gone on to publish many more articles on chemicals in farmed salmon in the decade since. It’s become world news. In fact, the biggest story out of Norway, where the BC industry is from, in the past year, is doctors and scientists repeatedly warning Norwegians not to eat farmed salmon, particularly women, pregnant women, and children, because of the chemicals in the fish. For a collection of these articles, see: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/Norwegian%20Articles%20reduced%20file%20size.pdf.  Cancer causing PCBs, for example, take more than 50 years to be washed from the body.

So farmed fish is full of many kinds of chemicals, the cancer causing ones from feed, then SLICE, endosulfan and a host of other pesticides and antibiotics. The cancer causing chemical problem is currently causing big problems for the Scotland industry – they tried to maintain the fiction they were sustainable and organic. If they said it long enough perhaps people would believe it.

The solution to this and most other problems is and has always been taking the farms out of the water and growing the fish on land in closed containers, like the Namgis project on Vancouver Island. I don’t think Raine has much acquaintance with the real problems, so here is a list I will send to her. You might want to contact her too: nancy.raine@sen.parl.gc.ca.

·      DFO is conflicted with fish farms.

·       The Cohen Commission told the Harper government to remove the conflict and make DFO get on with saving wild salmon.

·      Fish farms are not about jobs and revenue. They are a net negative to the economy.

·       Fish feed has cancer causing, and other chemicals in it.

·       Diseases kill one third to one half of all aquaculture products around the globe.

·       Wild salmon decline more than 50% where fish farms are introduced around the world.

·       Fish farms already have triple the capacity than what they use in BC. They do not need expansions.

·       On land fish farms solve virtually all problems of in-ocean open-net fish farms.

·       Fish farm sewage costs are astronomical and no one wants to pay for them.

·       Fish farms kill seals, sea lions and other animals around the globe.

·       Cohen Commission reconvened over fish farm diseases, when ISA was demonstrated in wild salmon.

·       Aquatic animal disease is part and parcel of aquaculture.

·       Scientists and doctors tell Norwegians not to eat farmed salmon because of the chemicals in them.

·       Public opposition to in-ocean fish farms is growing around the world.

·       Sea lice chemical use grows dramatically.

·       Governments and fish farms like to claim they operate under the strictest laws in the world, which is not true, and then fish farms push for weakening the laws.

Tune in for my next article that discusses these negative impacts of fish farms.

Fish Farm Sewage – DFO Expansions Cost You Money - March 19, 2014, Updated Jan 17, 2016

The response to the Cohen Report in DFO’s Ottawa is zero, but in BC it is huge. The petition against allowing any new fish farms or expansions has been signed by more than 100,000 citizens [link 1]. The people of BC have spoken – get the farms out of the water. The petition is going to Christy Clark who can prevent or eliminate fish farms by refusing or eliminating leases – in only sixty days. It’s that simple.

You will know that DFO is looking at 11, er, 12 – the number keeps growing – expansions or new farms. It’s response to Cohen’s key recommendation that DFO be stripped of its conflict of interest in fish farms, and deal solely with wild fish – the 2005 Wild Salmon Policy, the 1986 Habitat Policy and a new west coast director general for bringing back Fraser sockeye – is to ignore Cohen and keep on adding fish farms to our pristine ocean.

But 100,000 signatures is big time support for getting fish farms out of the water and sending them back to Norway – we the people of BC don’t want them. And DFO’s interest is hard to fathom. Perhaps it believes its own mantra that fish farms mean jobs and revenue. Well, its own report, put out by BC Stats, shows there is not much of either in BC, with only $61.9 million contribution to GPP from all parts of aquaculture, and only 1,700 jobs in all. By comparison, the rest of the fishing sector – sport, processing and commercial – is ten times that size, with more than 90% of the sector’s $667.4 million toward GPP; and jobs are 87.8% of the 13,900 total. Fish farms are about 10%.

When you factor in that with wild salmon numbers down by 50% since fish farms set up shop in BC [link2], those small number of jobs aren’t new, they simply replace jobs eliminated in other sectors. The commercial guys, for instance, are down 50% at 1400 jobs or nearly 83% of those fish farm jobs. They would like them back.

It’s actually worse than it looks, and that’s pretty bad. I ferreted out there are only 795 actual jobs in fish farming. So it’s simply not true there are jobs and revenue in fish farms. It’s just not true. But don’t be mistaken, the cost to us is huge. The cost DFO doesn’t pay attention to – but we have to – is the sewage cost to our pristine ocean.

And just so you know, the industry already has in place a maximum of 280,000 metric tonnes of production. So why are they asking for more, when they have never produced more than 83,000 and could produce more than three times more than they actually do produce right now? Good question.

DFO’s numbers are: 83,000 annual metric tonnes of product; 19,140 metric tonnes of new fish farms; and, fish are 4.5 kg at harvest. And as we all know, the cost of treating sewage is huge. Why, in Victoria, the bill as everyone knows is $783 million for 360,000 people. And that’s just building it.

The commonly accepted number of fish in the sewage department is: 3 – 10 fish equal the sewage of one human being. Hard to believe, but check it on Google. And our cost that we absorb and thus pay for, using the conservative 10 to 1 ratio, is [Equation3]:

1000/4.5 X 19,140 = 4.25 million/10 = .425 million human equivalents

$783/.36 = $X/.425 = $924 million.

So not only are multiplier jobs down, and the actual number of jobs is very very small, but the cost to British Columbians from expansion (when they don’t need it because they already have triple authorized more than what they produce now) is: $924 million in sewage cost alone. Do you want to pay for this?

My look around shows me the biggest problem encountered in treating sewage is that no one wants to pay a bean of anyone else’s sewage treatment cost. So why would we pay for fish, that aren’t even human? I don’t think so.

So, the sewage cost to our environment just for expansion [Fish farm expansions4], that we have to absorb, is basically a billion dollars. And we know from the 100,000 signatures on the petition to get fish farms out of the water that, obviously, no one wants to pay this sewage cost.

And then there are all the rest of the problems: exotic diseases like HSMI, ISA; killing of seals; reduction of oceans of fish that people should eat – even krill in Antarctica if you can believe it; killing wild salmon; and, chemicals in the fish. So many chemicals that the big news out of Norway the past year is that doctors and scientists are warning people not to eat farmed salmon.

Tell Christy Clark – premier@gov.bc.ca – to send farms back to Norway. We want DFO to work only on wild salmon. And let’s have the same $400 million DFO’s Gail Shea put into aquaculture on the east coast in NL and PEI spent on wild salmon here. But let’s get rid of the sewage first. No one wants to pay for anyone else’s shit. Tell Gail: Min@dfo-mpo.gc.ca.

Notes:

Link1: The Change.org petition is: http://chn.ge/1fVs6GP .
Link2: Fish farms kill more than 50% of wild salmon in BC: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2013/01/fish-farms-kill-more-than-50-of-wild.html.

Equation3: 1000kg/metric tonne /4.5 kg/fish X 19,140 metric tonnes = 4.25 million fish/10 fish per human = .425 million human equivalents

$783 million/.36 million people = $X/.425 = $924 million.

Fish farm applications4: http://www.arfd.gov.bc.ca/ApplicationPosting/index.jsp?PrimaryStatus=any&keyword=AQUACULTURE%20/%20FIN%20FISH

Fish Farm Sewage - Causes Algal Blooms, Updated Feb 25, 2014

As if there were not enough evidence that fish farms should be on land so their sewage and other problems are not fouling our pristine oceans, I have the staggering preliminary estimate of $10.4 Billion cost to the people of BC. If BC cancelled fish farm leases, in sixty days, farms would be on land and cause $0 sewage damage to the ocean and the people of BC.

There is has been so much fish farm sewage for the past decade, that even in the early 2000s, it started causing world wide problems. Read this World Wildlife Fund report from circa 2000: http://www.wwf.org.uk/filelibrary/pdf/secret.pdf. It makes sobering reading of fish farm sewage and its role in toxic algal blooms.

Also see, fish farm sewage causes damaging algal blooms: http://www.eurocbc.org/page222.html.

"Salmon farm wastes may tip the ecological balance to such an extent that algal blooms become toxic. During the past decade, there has been a worldwide increase in marine microalgae that are harmful to finfish, shellfish and humans. Mass mortalities of farmed salmon have been recorded recently in the Chiloe area of Chile, Shetland in Scotland and in Norway where millions have died in their cages. Harmful algal blooms associated with intensive aquaculture operations have been recorded in Scotland, Ireland, Norway, Japan, Finland, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Canada and Chile. 

Amnesic, Paralytic and Diarrhetic Shellfish Poisoning events have plagued the Scottish, Canadian, Irish, Chilean and Norwegian coasts. The international community have finally begun to tackle this issue. AQUATOXSAL, for example, is an EC-funded research project involving Chile, Argentina, France and Germany investigating the links between salmon farm wastes and toxic algal blooms. In Scotland, in response to a petition by marine toxicologist Allan Berry, the Scottish Executive have hired Professor Ted Smayda of the University of Rhode Island to assess "the impact of nutrient inputs from fish farms on the algal communities of the Scottish coastal zone". And in British Columbia the Pollution and Prevention and Remediation Branch of the BC Ministry of Environment hired consultants to "document emerging research with respect to plankton blooms and netcages". Other research has focused on the use of seaweeds to remove salmon farm waste, the addition of chemicals to 'neutralise' toxic wastes or the use of 'nappies' to collect wastes. In the final analysis, completely closed systems for the containment of contaminated wastes can be the only solution. The solution to pollution is not dilution."

The solution is getting fish farms out of our pristine oceans and putting them on land in closed containers. Next, the sewage post.

Fish Farm Diseases - ISA in Norway and ETC.

AS I have said, ISA has been a constant in Norway for the past forty years.

Read this for February 2014: http://www.thefishsite.com/fishnews/22461/infectious-salmon-anaemia-reported-at-lofoten.

There is still ISA in Chile: http://www.thefishsite.com/fishnews/21938/isa-strain-hpr-7a-detected-on-chilean-fish-farm. It has not gone away since Aqua Gen brought it from Norway, for firms like Marine Harvest and Cermaq Mainstream, wiping out the industry in 2008. A quarter of a billion dead salmon. There was no ISA in the Pacific, until the Norwegian industry brought it there.

There is ISA in Newfoundland, Canada: http://www.undercurrentnews.com/2013/08/30/gray-aqua-nearly-40m-in-debt-hit-by-three-cases-of-isa/. Aqua Gray has been sliding in and out of bankruptcy since summer 2013 due to ISA infections killing farmed salmon.

There is ISA in Atlantic Canada. Cooke Aquaculture got $13,000,000 for ISA diseased salmon in 2012: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/13m-for-cooke-aquaculture-after-infected-salmon-1.2488620.

ISA in NL and NS, Gray Aqua, Cooke Aquaculture, 2013: https://responsibleaquaculture.wordpress.com/2013/07/26/cooke-gray-aqua-see-isa-in-newfoundland-salmon-feedlots/.

Fish farm spin goes this way: there is no ISA in BC, there is no ISA in Chile... oh, darn, now there is ISA in BC, ISA in NL, NS, oh well, we'll just have to live with it. They have used this approach wherever there is not ISA, but then it shows up.

Seven different labs have shown ISA is in BC, the last place on earth where it should be because all wild Pacific salmon can be killed. In fact, BC's wild salmon have declined 50% since fish farms have set up shop in BC. They are still in the phase saying there is no ISA in BC.

The labs of Kristi Miller, Are Nylund and Fred Kibenge have all registered ISA in BC. Fish farms, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and the BC disease testing system have all said there is no ISA in BC.

Key Document - Taxpayer Money for Diseased Dead Fish

This just in: "Since 1996, at least $135 Million has been paid by government to compensate industry for having to eradicate farmed salmon infected with ISA."

See: http://www.thefishsite.com/fishnews/21916/maines-salmon-farming-management-sets-good-example#sthash.UJ6ZZFpi.dpuf.

Now back to the original post: 

I now have reliable figures on slaughtered fish payments of your taxpayer dollars to billion dollar Norwegian derivative fish farms in BC, and others across Canada. Cermaq Mainstream, Marine Harvest and Grieg Seafood may be happy to hear I will eat some crow, as the BC figures are much lower than my earlier estimate.

The reason for having to make estimates is that fish farms typically do their best to prevent the public knowing how much taxpayer money they receive from us for diseased fish that foul our pristine oceans. Behind the scenes, they often have lawyers trying to keep such numbers, and in the BC case, the disease records for testing of their farms, from the public, as happened during the Cohen Commission. He didn’t buy it.

And in this case, it was precisely that, a fish farm legal injunction made my request wait 10 months before our taxpayer dollars were put in a table and sent to me. My estimate of $35 million in BC is incorrect. The payments to Cermaq Mainstream's IHN diseased Clayoquot Sound farmed salmon are: $2.64 Million for 959,498 diseased salmon (report date: Nov 2012); and, $201,000 for infected equipment and supplies (report date: Jan 2013). The total is $2.8 Million, or $3 per fish, not $30 per fish.

What has not made much news is that the Grieg Seafood open net operation in Sechelt also received payment for slaughtered IHN diseased fish: $1.61 Million for 312,032 diseased salmon (report date: Nov 2012); and, $152,000 for infected equipment and supplies (2013), or $5.60 per diseased salmon.

But get the bottom line: in little more than a year, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency paid fish farms almost $50 Million taxpayer dollars for diseased slaughtered fish across Canada. 

You see, in addition to the figures I received, I noticed the St. John’s Telegram newspaper reported $33 Million of taxpayer money given to fish farms in Atlantic Canada for slaughtered diseased fish: http://www.thetelegram.com/News/Local/2014-01-11/article-3571724/N.L.%26rsquo%3Bs-destroyed-salmon-tab%3A-%2433M/1. Their table shows a bunch of handouts pretty close to the often-quoted CFIA $30 per fish.

In July 2013, Manuel's Arm, a Kelly Cove Salmon farm, was paid $23.96 per fish for 100,000 diseased fish, and its Pot Harbour/Hermitage Bay site was paid $8,232,000, or $23.52 per fish for 350,000 diseased fish in December 2012. In fact, the big story from the east is that at the same time fish are dying of ISA and other diseases and we’re paying for it, DFO is giving NL almost $400 million more taxpayer money to put in more open-net fish farms! What a waste. And one of the firms we gave money to, Gray Aqua, has been sliding in and out of bankruptcy proceedings since last summer.

The reasonable British Columbian has to ask: where is the money for BC’s wild salmon? We want $400 Million for habitat restoration. What is DFO actually spending here? DFO’s community habitat program for Vancouver Island is so small it is almost non-existent: $200,000. For all of BC it is $.9 M this year or .45% of the NL money. DFO: we want $400 Million for wild salmon here. Not simply the $1.8 M salmon licence money given to the Pacific Salmon Foundation, where the $400 M should go so BC once again takes control of its own fish with a made-in-BC program.

The real solution to fish farms is to get the old-tech dinosaurs out of the water, which the BC government can do in 60 days by cancelling leases. Even though fish farms say it can’t be done, I have a list of 65 different closed systems comprising more than 8,000 actual on-land farms around the world.

The most recent symposium on closed containment was in Virginia this past September. Tides Canada maintains a link to the plus fifty presentations. They are even doing closed containment science in Norway for Pete’s sake: http://tidescanada.org/salmon/aquaculture-innovation-workshops-and-reports/.

You may wonder why DFO backs in-ocean fish farms in BC at all. I sure do. And we all remember the Cohen Report recommended DFO be stripped of this conflict of interest and deal solely with wild salmon – the 2005 Wild Salmon Policy and 1986 Habitat Policy, with a new west coast director general for bringing back Fraser sockeye. None of these have happened since Report date of October 31, 2012.

It’s hard to fathom DFO’s interest in fish farms. Perhaps they believe what they and fish farms like to say: fish farms create employment and revenue. Well, I waited five years for the best source of info to update their numbers, and they show decisively that fish farms don’t contribute much of either.

The best stats, from BC Stats – that DFO paid for and put its name on, but acts as though they don’t exist – show this is not true. See: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2013/02/sport-fishing-how-we-tack-up-feb-6-2013.html.

In BC all aquaculture comprises a measly $61.9 Million of Gross Provincial Product, meaning only 9% of the fishing sector’s total of $667.4 M BC GPP contribution. Sport fishing is miles above at $325.7 M or 48.4%. And the employment that they talk of is similarly small at 1,700 or 12.2% in multiplier terms that include spin off jobs. The entire fish sector is 13,900 jobs, with sport fishing 60.4% at 8,400 jobs. The $400 Million for wild salmon restoration would do wonders for processing, commercial and sport fishing employment, not to mention the entire wild BC province.

And there’s more. I spotted a science paper that confirms what most supporters of wild salmon have always suspected: wild salmon stocks in BC have declined 50% since fish farms set up shop: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2013/01/fish-farms-kill-more-than-50-of-wild.html. The paper shows the same in Ireland, Scotland and Atlantic Canada. Note that Commercial sector employment has been cut 50%, 1,400 jobs, in the same time period.

So, I did some sleuthing and found that the actual number of real fish farm jobs in BC is a very small 795. Commercial job losses in the same period are 1,400 jobs due to the loss of wild salmon. So fish farm jobs likely eliminate jobs in other sectors, resulting in a net employment loss. The same can be said for revenue.

This does not add in losses in processing, and the sport sector from DFO allowing wild salmon to decline 50%. Little wonder the Cohen Commission said DFO is in a conflict of interest. His recommendation was that fish farm support needs to be eliminated and DFO should concentrate solely on the Wild Salmon Policy and its Habitat Policy.

Notes:

1.     The BC Stats report: http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/StatisticsBySubject/BusinessIndustry/FisheriesAquacultureHuntingTrapping.aspx.

BC Stats 2011 Report: Fish, Processing, Sport Fishing and Aquaculture Stats - Figures in Millions (and 2002 constant dollars, except for 2011 Revenue)

	Commercial	Processing	Sport	Aquaculture	Total
Contribution to GDP, and %	$102.3 (15.3%)	$177.5 (26.6)	$325.7 (48.8%)	$61.9  (9.3%)	$667.4 100%
% GDP					0.4%
Employment (% of total)	1,400 (10.1%)	2,400 (17.3%)	8,400 (60.4%)	1,700 (12.2%)	13,900 100%
Wages and Salaries % of Total	$78.4* $8.4 2.2%	$105.3 $105.3 27.5%	$218.9 $218.9 57.1%	$55.7 $55.7 14.5%	- $383.3 100%
Total 2011 Revenue (increase/decrease)	$344.8 (+4.1%)	$427.5 (+2.1%)	$936.5 (+0.8%)	$469.0 (-12.2%)	$2,177.8
Revenue % of Total	15.8%	19.6%	43.0%	21.5%	100%

2.     My column on the BC Stats report: http://www.catchsalmonbc.com/?p=522.

A USA report says commercial and sport fishing is worth $199 Billion to the US economy and employs 1.7 million people: http://www.thefishsite.com/fishnews/19805/report-finds-commercial-recreational-saltwater-fishing-generated-199-billion-in-2011

ISA Confirmation

See this link for a good short description of the tests used to confirm ISA in fish: http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/media/back-fiche/2011/20111108-eng.htm.

Key Document: Slaughter Payments to Fish Farms - Jan 16, 2014

This link takes you to the Telegram newspaper that reports $33 Million of taxpayer money given to fish farms in Atlantic Canada by the federal government for slaughtered diseased fish farm fish: http://www.thetelegram.com/News/Local/2014-01-11/article-3571724/N.L.%26rsquo%3Bs-destroyed-salmon-tab%3A-%2433M/1.

I now have some figures that I accept on slaughter fish payments of taxpayer dollars in BC and Grant Wartkentin and Cermaq Mainstream, Marine Harvest and Grieg Seafood may be happy to hear I will eat some crow here, as the BC figures are lower, much lower than my estimate.

The reason for having to make an estimate is that fish farms regularly refuse to let the public know how much taxpayer money they receive for diseased fish that foul our pristine oceans. And behind the scenes, they regularly have their lawyers keeping such numbers, and in the BC case, the disease records for testing of their farms, from the public, as happened during the Cohen Commission, and in this case, getting information from government.

And in this case, it was precisely that, a fish farm legal injunction that made my request wait 10 months before the millions of taxpayer dollars were put in a table and sent to me. My estimate of $35 million in BC is incorrect. The payments to Cermaq Mainstream's IHN diseased Clayoquot Sound farmed salmon are: $2.64 Million for 959,498 diseased salmon (paid in Nov 2012); and, $201,000 for infected equipment and supplies (paid in Jan 2013). The total is $2.8 Million, or $3 per fish, not $30 per fish.

What has not made the news is that the Grieg Seafood open net operation in Sechelt also received payment for slaughtered IHN diseased fish: $1.61 Million for 312,032 diseased salmon (Nov 2012); and, $152,000 for infected equipment and supplies (2013), or $5.60 per diseased salmon.

And here's the bottom line. In the past year or so, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency paid fish farms a total of $30.6 Million of taxpayer dollars for diseased slaughtered fish farm fish. That's pretty close to the $35 Million estimate and I don't think any taxpayer wants to pay a single dollar for these diseased fish, particularly when diseases become a thing of the past when the fish are raised on-land in closed containers with recirculating systems. The old-tech dinosaur operations need to move to land.

I will get back to you with more when I have had a chat with the Telegram. Stay tuned.