Farmed salmon hot topic at Seafood Summit
FishfarmingXpert, Odd Grydeland, Febuary 02, 2011
Canada: From the welcoming remarks by the Mayor of Vancouver to the discussions around the sustainability of the Peruvian anchoveta fishery, the business of salmon farming kept creeping into the presentations and subsequent deliberations
The 9th Annual Seafood Summit got off to a reasonably relaxed official start today (Monday) with an eloquent welcome and official opening and blessing by an aboriginal Elder- Audrey Rivers from the Squamish First Nation. She spoke among else about the historical importance of salmon to the many aboriginal nations that have inhabited the region for 8-10,000years(thus the term “First Nations”). She never mentioned farmed salmon once.
Dubbed “Responsibility Without Borders?”, the Summit theme was “chosen to reflect the growing imperative to acknowledge and act on the connectivity of our industry”. It was pointed out by many that everybody involved with the seafood industry needed to be- and in fact were- in the same room. In his opening remarks, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson couldn’t avoid having to take pot shots at the region’s salmon farming industry, which currently contributes some CAD$ 800 million to the provincial economy. The Mayor has set a goal that Vancouver will be the world’s “greenest” city by 2020, with an expected reduction in its carbon footprint by some 33 per cent.
Robertson suggested that salmon runs had been lost, and that concerns about “wild” salmon is as high in Vancouver as anywhere else (a large portion of the salmon swimming in the ocean outside British Columbia comes from hatcheries that each year pump out approximately 500,000,000 juvenile salmon). One of the “hot topics” around the well being of salmon is salmon farming, according to Mayor Robertson, and this is why it’s “hard to find farmed salmon in Vancouver restaurants”.
And while most of today’s speakers expressed an appreciation of the fact that most segments of the seafood industry were represented at this Seafood Summit- including the various industries involved with fishing and farming of seafood-, one environmentalist tried to upset the applecart by suggesting that it was inappropriate for a fish food maker to be a sponsor of the Summit. There was no support voiced to this from the saner delegates at the meeting.
Dr. Sigbjørn Tveterås gave a practical overview of the fishery for ”forage fish” in Peru- how much of the production is going to fish meal and fish oil, and how much is being used for human food and pharmaceuticals. He said that about 12% of the region’s fish oil production is now used as “refined edibles”, meaning various tablets and foods sold for their content of Omega-3 fatty acids. The use of fish feed in aquaculture has generated some 3 million man-years of employment- much of it in developing countries. And because fish meal and fish oil is currently at record high levels, while the cost of canning or freezing these ‘forage fish” for human consumption is high, the likelihood of more of this protein source going to human consumption is not good. Attempts of increasing human use of these fish are however ongoing.
