We should be helping fish-farm industry
By Jon Ferry, The Province, May 14, 2010
We all have our limitations. And I have a blind spot when it comes to fish, particularly when it comes to catching them. However, I'm reasonably good at smelling a rat. And I've been sniffing a few lately when it comes to the current campaign against fish farming in B.C.
First, it seems to be driven by zealots who vilify anybody who dares to question their cause, which strikes me as both iffy and fishy.
Then, I learn that B.C. salmon farms directly and indirectly employ around 6,000 people. And I wonder why, in these uncertain economic times, would anyone want to shut down an $800-million-a-year industry, or at least severely hobble it?
Finally, I get nervous when I see former commercial fisherman John Cummins, the Delta-Richmond East Conservative MP, joining native activist Ernie Crey in support of crusading biologist Alexandra Morton and the supposed "consensus" that sea lice and other diseases from farmed fish are killing off wild salmon.
As we've discovered in the global-warming debate, an ideologically driven consensus is a long way from proof. Also, this consensus seems to ignore the fact that coastal salmon populations can vary wildly, and no one really seems to know why.
As for Morton, I'm sure she's well-educated, well-intentioned and richly deserves to be known as the David Suzuki of the anti-fish-farm movement. But I'm always suspicious of scientists who are activists. I mean, isn't the whole point of science to keep an open mind, not proselytize for a cause?
And it's becoming increasingly clear that it's not really science in play here, but what Simon Fraser University international relations student Erika Zell, writing in The Peak newspaper, calls "farmed fish paranoia." Zell recounts she how she was in line for sushi recently when the customer in front proudly proclaimed that she only ate wild salmon — and promptly walked out when the cashier, who spoke poor English, "meekly said he didn't know which type of salmon the restaurant used."
Ah, yes, there again is the self-righteousness of a person who's found a cause, like that on display at last Saturday's giant anti-fish-farm demo in Victoria. But, as Zell asks, is fish farming any worse than chicken farming, wheat farming or any other modern farming where chemicals are used (and they invariably are)?
And why is it OK for us to eat land animals that spend their entire lives in cages, but not fish? After all, as Zell also notes, the reason folks now farm cattle is because they realized long ago they couldn't sustain meat consumption by traditional hunting: "When will we figure out that it's the same situation with salmon?"
Indeed, there's a compelling argument to be made that fish farming, in spite of all its faults, is the environmentally correct thing to do because it reduces, not increases, the global pressure on wild salmon stocks.
My view is that supposedly intelligent folks like Morton, Cummins and Crey should start looking at ways to help the fish-farm industry grow, create more jobs and clean itself up — and stop trying to drive it into extinction.
