10 Reasons Why Premier Stephen McNeil Should Halt Open Pen Fish Farming

Tell Premier McNeil that you are opposed to open pen salmon farms in Novia Scotia's waters PREMIER@novascotia.ca

1. Open pen salmon isn’t good for you. Treated with dyes, pesticides and antibiotics and raised in pens treated with various heavy metals, open pen farmed salmon may contain contaminants that can cause serious health risks for humans. Consumption of more than one meal of open pen farmed salmon per month could pose unacceptable cancer risks according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s methods for calculating fish consumption advisories. See http://www.albany.edu/ihe/salmonstudy/
   NOTE: All “Fresh Atlantic salmon,” or “farmed salmon” for sale in restaurants or grocery stores, whole or in fillets, anywhere in North America, is open pen farmed salmon. “Wild” salmon is always some variety of wild Pacific salmon.
    
2. Open pen salmon costs taxpayers millions of dollars in subsidies and “crop failure” payments, while threatening or destroying other, more sustainable existing industries like the lobster fishery and tourism. In 2012, for example, in Nova Scotia, the NDP government offered Cooke Aquaculture $25 million to expand its business. In 2012, the federal government also paid out millions of dollars of “crop failure” monies to the same company when salmon in an open pen farm in Shelburne, NS were found to carry Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA), a highly contagious disease lethal to salmon and some other finfish. For more on ISA, see http://responsibleaquaculture.wordpress.com/isa-facts/
    
3. Open pen fish farms pollute our coastal waters and beaches with tons of untreated waste. For every 1000 metric tons of farmed salmon produced, approximately 200 megatons of feces and waste builds on the ocean floor, smothering marine life, creating dead zones and fouling the beaches and shores, thus impacting tourism and wildlife.
   Now that we’re finally treating our own sewage in HRM, why should we welcome an industry that that pours untreated waste into our bays and harbours? But apparently we are. A subsidiary of Scottish aquaculture giant Loch Duart, has established one farm within the bounds of HRM and applied for licenses for several more. For more information look at the pull down menu under  "Fish Farms" on this site.
    
4. Open pen fish farms aren’t good for lobsters, sea birds and other sea life. Chemicals used in open pen salmon farms – antibiotics, pesticides and antifouling agents like copper--create toxic conditions in the water column and on the sea bottom, posing serious health risks for marine life. Scientific evidence has shown that lobster populations have been reduced in bays where salmon farms are present in Nova Scotia – potentially risking the livelihood of coastal peoples. Other studies show that numbers of sea birds decline significantly in waters around open pen feedlots. Government regulations to monitor the environmental impact of open pen fish farms have not worked and environmental monitoring has been manipulated to hide the true ecological impact of these industrial aquaculture operations.
   Worse still, as of the end of 2012, federal omnibus bills C-38 and C-45—the bills that the Idle No More movement continues to protest against--have done away with habitat concerns in the Fisheries Act, the need for environmental impact assessment for any industrial projects including fish farms, and done away with requirements for permission to set up in all but a few navigable waters. For a scientific paper weighing some of these risks in Atlantic Canada, see http://artsandscience.usask.ca/economics/skjournal/sej-3rd/Gelhorn.htm
    
5. Open pen salmon farms deplete wild fish populations and destroy viable direct food sources, particularly food sources for poor and third world coastal dwellers. It takes about three kilograms of wild fish to produce one kilogram of open pen farmed salmon. We are thus removing local sources of protein in order to create a luxury product. See Looting the Seas, part III for more information: http://www.publicintegrity.org/environment/natural-resources/looting-seas
    
6. Open pen salmon farms easily become intensive breeding grounds for ISA (Infectious Salmon Anemia) and other serious diseases. Cooke Aquaculture, with the blessing of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), is now processing ISA infected salmon and sending them to the market for humans to eat, despite the fact that this is an internationally reportable disease that has required the wholesale destruction of the fish in every other jurisdiction. Salmon infested with sea lice have also made it to our grocery stores. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2013/01/19/nb-quarantined-salmon.html
    
7.  Open pen salmon farms are economically unsustainable. Salmon market prices are well below production costs in this hemisphere, but companies like Cooke Aquaculture thrive from government subsidies ($25 million from Nova Scotia’s NDP government), as well as federal monies they receive when salmon ‘crops’ fail due to diseases such as ISA. Worse still, contaminants from open pen fish farms threaten lobster health and growth; pesticides used to kill sea lice also kill lobsters.
   The lobster fishery is a billion dollar a year business in Nova Scotia; why in the world would the provincial government do anything to harm it? Employment in open pen fish farms does not begin to match employment in wild catch fisheries in terms of quality of work, salaries, or numbers of people employed. See http://responsibleaquaculture.wordpress.com/2012/02/29/where-are-the-jobs/
    
8. Open pen salmon threaten the health and genetic vigour of wild salmon. In Nova Scotia some salmon farms are on the migration routes of our recovering wild Atlantic salmon. To find out more about these concerns see the website of the Atlantic Salmon Federation: http://asf.ca/main.html
    
9. Open pen fish farm licenses were granted in undemocratic ways, and privilege large national and international companies over citizen’s rights. Thousands of citizens and hundreds of community groups have protested against the imposition of open pen fish farms in their coastal waters, but their concerns have been ignored by their government representatives. We faced a serious democratic deficit on this issue. It has yet to be proved that something has changed under the new regulations. Watch Salmon Wars for more insight: http://www.salmonwars.com/
    
10. Land based closed-containment salmon farms are the way of the future. Let’s support home-grown sustainable ventures like Sustainable Blue: http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/124757-inland-fish-farm-may-signal-new-wave

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

• Write to or call Premier McNeil demanding a halt to open pen finfish farming in Nova Scotia.
  Phone:  (902) 424-6600 
  E-mail Address: PREMIER@novascotia.ca
  Address:
  Office of the Premier
  P.O. Box 726
  Halifax, Nova Scotia
  B3J 2T3
• DONATE to help us continue this battle.
• Join our facebook group: Eastern Shore Residents Against Open Salmon Farming https://www.facebook.com/groups/170720309704685/
• Boycott open pen feedlot salmon: Don’t eat it; it’s bad for you! http://www.salmonfeedlotboycott.com/
• Inform yourself and others. Watch Salmon Wars and check out our website and other links provided here. Share what you find out with family and friends.