Huge amounts of farmed Atlantic salmon are entering the US marketplace, (see World News, 23 April 2002) but a group of US West Coast consumers, fishers and conservation advocates is working to point out what they say are the hazards of the farmed salmon.
Canadian exporters sold 12,055 tonnes of Atlantic salmon south of the border in January and February and claimed 39.4 per cent of the market share, while Chile exported 15,860 tonnes to the US during the same period accounting for 51.9 per cent of the total import market.
To make their point opposing farmed Atlantic salmon, on 9 May members of the coalition delivered an Atlantic salmon raised in a fish farm in British Columbia to the Canadian Consulate in Seattle. The group carried signs that listed what they say are the environmental and health hazards of industrially produced salmon. The coalition returned the BC farmed Atlantic salmon as a symbolic gesture of their concern that the number of open netpens in BC will double if the provincial government proceeds with its plan to lift the moratorium that limited expansion of the number of fish farm sites in BC.
The moratorium was put into place after a review of the salmon aquaculture industry and release of the Province's Strategic Aquaculture Review (SAR) in 1997. Although only a handful of the recommendations have been implemented, BC announced that the moratorium would be lifted on 30 April this year. The provincial government has yet to cancel the moratorium to date but the ban is expected to be lifted this year.
Scientists, academics, NGOs, fishers, community leaders, First Nations and Native groups have expressed widespread opposition to the lifting of the moratorium. An open letter signed by 200 organisations and leading scientists was sent to President George Bush and Prime Minister Jean Chretien calling attention to the harm to wild salmon stocks caused by the fish farm industry.
In the Pacific Northwest, a loose coalition has come together to educate the public about the differences between sustainable, health-enhancing wild salmon and feedlot produced farmed salmon. The group has also been gathering signatures on petitions calling for the BC government to keep the moratorium in place, and to protect the environment and wild salmon from diseases and sea lice that it says are spreading from netpens that act as reservoirs for epidemics.
Anne Mosness, a former commercial fisher and currently Western Regional Co-ordinator of the Industrial Fish Farm Reform Project for the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy says she is concerned that both fishermen and consumers are suffering from the flood of farmed salmon on the market. The group says it is concerned about the numbers of non-native salmon that escape from the mesh sided pens and the pollution the feedlot facilities produce. "The postponement of the lifting of the moratorium is a minor victory," Mosness said. " Both BC and Washington State still allow millions of pounds of fish sewage to flush into the marine environment."
Lisa Ramirez of Friends of the Earth said the groups were calling on the Canadian government to maintain its current moratorium on new ocean net cages, improve practices at existing fish farms, and initiate a meaningful public process to evaluate the impact of industrial fish farming on wild fish stocks, fish habitat, and fishing dependent communities.:
