The Dec. 30 opinion piece titled "N.S. aquaculture sustainable and well-regulated," by Bruce Hancock, executive director of Aquaculture Association of Nova Scotia, was a whitewashing of the aquaculture industry in our region. It stated that the industry is sustainable and non-polluting, but evidence indicates otherwise.
This is an industry that dumps its waste such as feces and pesticides into the ocean, rather than making the investment to do it properly, on land, where all of the byproducts can be managed. Right now, the cost of farmed salmon is misleadingly low because the environmental cost is not accounted for.
There is just a handful of large companies controlling the global salmon aquaculture industry. With sensible regulation, they would all change their practices; and if the result were a higher price, the market would adjust and people would pay the appropriate cost for quality protein. One major obstacle to progress is the lack of will in our elected members.
Even in the face of the overwhelmingly negative picture, both levels of government continue to champion the salmon aquaculture industry, denying that there is a conflict of interest with their responsibility also to champion the interests of the wild salmon stocks. They never truly follow the precautionary principle, reacting instead to the lure of a few jobs.
The stocks of wild salmon are in serious decline in every place where fish pens are put in their path. Our inner Bay of Fundy salmon runs, in the tens of thousands before the advent of fish pens, are now gone. Read more...
There is just a handful of large companies controlling the global salmon aquaculture industry. With sensible regulation, they would all change their practices; and if the result were a higher price, the market would adjust and people would pay the appropriate cost for quality protein. One major obstacle to progress is the lack of will in our elected members.
Even in the face of the overwhelmingly negative picture, both levels of government continue to champion the salmon aquaculture industry, denying that there is a conflict of interest with their responsibility also to champion the interests of the wild salmon stocks. They never truly follow the precautionary principle, reacting instead to the lure of a few jobs.
The stocks of wild salmon are in serious decline in every place where fish pens are put in their path. Our inner Bay of Fundy salmon runs, in the tens of thousands before the advent of fish pens, are now gone. Read more...
This blog is written by Martin Little The Aquaculturists, published and supported by the International Aquafeed Magazine from Perendale Publishers.
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