AR-News: (CA) problems with fish farming

[Barry Kent MacKay]

The Toronto Star

Mon Sep 29 15:31:29 2003

Trouble on the farm
Raising fish in captivity seems like a logical and ecological alternative 
to emptying the oceans


JUDY STEED

Here's a 21st century fish story: Improving technologies and dwindling fish 
stocks are feeding a world-wide boom in fish-farming.

It sounds like a simple solution to a global problem, but a fierce, 
three-way fight has erupted among the industry, environmentalists and 
scientists.

The aquaculture industry says that environmentalists are warning of 
problems with fish farming are "fear-mongering."

In the third corner of the ring wary scientists are putting farmed salmon 
under the microscope, questioning whether it's as safe to eat as the wild
fish.

Salmon is special. It's one of Canada's favourite foods. Not- withstanding 
what the scientists are finding it has been considered good for us. All 
those omega-3 fatty acids lower cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart 
disease, high blood pressure, and stroke; much is made, certainly by the 
fishing industry, about salmon as a potential fighter of depression, 
Alzheimer's disease, childhood asthma, cancer, diabetes and kidney disease. 
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency sets no limit on the amount of salmon 
we can consume every week.

Salmon is also the number one fish being farmed.

British Columbia and New Brunswick are Canada's biggest producers, with 
giant marine cages, formed by thick poly rope, holding as many as 100,000 
fish per net, with up to one million fish per site, floating in the Pacific 
and Atlantic oceans.

Fish farming generates revenues of more than $390 million in B.C. and $270 
million in New Brunswick, making up the largest agricultural exports from 
these two provinces.

Globally, by 2001, aquaculture accounted for 34 per cent - 48 million 
tonnes - of the fish we eat, including cultivated clams, mussels, oysters 
and shrimps, the latter produced primarily in Southeast Asia. (Lobsters 
roam free, so far.) Wild-fisheries provided 66 per cent of our seafood, or 
93.7 million tonnes.

But just as concerns have been raised about cattle fattened in huge 
feedlots, now there's a focus on fish fattened in cages.

The U.S. Environmental Working Group (EWG), as recently reported by CBS 
News, "found 70 per cent of (farmed) salmon tested contained PCB levels 
higher than EPA recommendations ... Similar studies in the U.K., Ireland 
and Canada found comparable results."

The farmed salmon assessed by the EWG had 16 times more PCBs than wild
salmon.

Earlier, USA Today reported on another study by a Canadian scientist, 
Michael Easton, an expert in ecotoxicology, who found in a pilot study that 
farmed salmon, compared to wild salmon, "contained elevated levels of 
chemical contaminants, including PCBs - known carcinogens."

Published in the peer-reviewed Chemosphere, an international science 
journal, Easton's research said that particular farmed salmon studied had 
ten times more PCBs than wild fish and that the levels of contamination 
posed a health risk to consumers, in his opinion.

The findings are in dispute.

The David Suzuki Foundation, the environmental advocacy group, commissioned 
the Easton study, says Nell Halse, president of the Canadian Aquaculture 
Industry Alliance, which has attacked Easton's findings.

"He only studied four fish. Those four fish, and that study by the 
Environmental Working Group, are responsible for all the controversy that's 
plaguing us."

Halse's pointedness conveys the heated nature of the fish-farming debate. 
"It's just fear mongering," he says of the PCB finding. She says the 
Canadian Food Inspection Agency has been clear that PCB levels in Bay of 
Fundy salmon, in her region, are well below acceptable levels.

The Suzuki Foundation says the tests were a pilot project and larger 
studies are coming. "The analysis," Otto Langer says, "is expensive."

Health-risk assessment is a sensitive, tricky business. Polychlorinated 
biphenyls were banned in the mid-1970s after being used in hundreds of 
industrial and commercial applications including "electrical, heat transfer 
and hydraulic equipment; as plasticizers in paints, plastics and rubber 
products; in pigments, dyes and carbonless copy paper and many other 
applications," reports the United States Environmental Protection Agency 
Web site. "More than 1.5 billion pounds of PCBs were manufactured in the 
United States prior to cessation of production in 1977."

Under "adverse health affects," the EPA states that "PCBs are probable 
human carcinogens," in addition to demonstrating a negative impact on the 
"immune system, reproductive system, nervous system, endocrine system and 
other health effects."

So PCBs are everywhere in the environment, and harmful. But the question of 
what is, in fact, an acceptable level persists.

"The types of PCBs that tend to bioaccumulate in fish and other animals and 
bind to sediments happen to be the most carcinogenic compounds of PCB 
mixtures," the EPA states. People who ingest PCB-contaminated fish "may be 
exposed to PCB mixtures that are even more toxic than the PCB mixtures 
contacted by workers and released into the environment."

Sensibly, the position of the Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance is 
that "we don't want to hide from the problem," says its executive director 
David Rideout. "We're not putting PCBs into (fish) pellets, PCBs are 
everywhere. But if there's something we can stop doing, we'll stop. We just 
want the government to put policies in place so we can move forward."

The European Union and World Health Organization set out more stringent 
levels than North American jurisdictions.

But concerns about fish farming - which seems so logical as an answer to 
overfishing natural stocks - expand beyond the PCB question.

For the past decade, the Suzuki Foundation has been warning about the 
dangers of crowded cages that expose farmed and wild fish to diseases, 
pollute the surrounding seas and seabed, and require the use of antibiotics.

Such concerns have helped turn the spotlight on alternative methods of 
farming fish, including traditional methods used in China for thousands of 
years.

The Chinese - "by far the world leaders in fish farming," says George 
Chamberlain, president of the U.S.-based Global Aquaculture Alliance - have 
been raising carp in captivity for at least 3500 years. More than 80 per 
cent of the world's farmed fish is produced in China, where the method of 
cultivating carp is "more sustainable," says the Suzuki Foundation's Otto 
Langer. "The Chinese raise carp in ponds or tanks. They're not in the ocean 
and they're not impacting marine life."

Carp also eat vegetation as opposed to fish meal; the latter's main 
ingredients include anchovies, mackerel and fish oil.

The Suzuki Foundation says it takes up to two kilos or more of wild fish to 
produce 500 grams of farmed salmon. "Anchovies and mackerel are usually 
taken out of the ocean near developing countries," says the foundation's 
Jean Kavanagh. Thus, she says, "The fish farming process represents a net 
loss of protein from the ocean."

Rideout disputes her figures. "It takes 1.4 pounds of feed to make 1 pound 
of farmed salmon. It used to be higher but that was before the industry got 
a handle on it. In comparison, 1 pound of beef requires 7 pounds of feed. 
As well, there's a lot of research to get to grain-based feed for salmon."

The business of modern-day, high tech fish farming was pioneered in Norway 
and Scotland, funded by North Sea oil revenues. It costs a minimum of $1 
million to set up a fish farm, with hatcheries where salmon eggs are mixed 
with milt (sperm) and hatchlings are tricked by manipulation of light into 
smelting (maturing) faster. They are anaesthetized, vaccinated and raised 
in fresh water tanks for a year before being trucked to sea sites.

Norwegian companies such as Stolt Sea Farms and Cermac Inc., and Nutreco 
Holding NV (Netherlands), lead the industry with big operations on Canada's 
coasts. George Weston Ltd., parent company of supermarket chain Loblaws, 
became a major player in Canada through its start-up of Heritage Salmon in 
the early 1990s. Headquartered in New Brunswick, Heritage also farms salmon 
in B.C., Maine and Chile. "We're one of the largest in North America but 
we're much smaller than the Norwegians," says Weston's Geoff Wilson.

Chile burst onto the scene in recent years, attracting giant multinationals 
to its long coastline with cheap labour ($8 a day) and "more relaxed 
regulatory climate," in the words of one Canadian official who asked not to 
be named. Norwegian companies control 30 per cent of Chile's salmon 
production; Norway's former fisheries minister has called for an 
investigation into environmental and labour conditions in Chilean fish 
farms, where unsanitary conditions are alleged.

An oversupply of cheaply produced Chilean salmon "caused a drop in price," 
says Weston's Wilson, "creating a difficult pricing environment." Last year 
the wholesale market price of salmon fell under $2 a pound but it's moving 
up, he says, and Loblaws' sales are still "growing in double digits," 
despite the PCB controversy.

"The market has lots of room to grow," says Nell Halse, who also wears a 
hat as general manager of the New Brunswick Salmon Growers Association, 
"but we have to be careful how we expand."

For Mary Ellen Walling, executive director of the B.C. Salmon Farmers 
Association, the problems facing the industry are complex. Technological 
innovation remains a focus for fish farmers, she says, citing tests of a 
new permeable net that would solve the problem of fish escaping while 
allowing waste and feed to flush out to sea.

Environmentalists' concerns about protecting wild Pacific salmon against 
competition from Atlantic salmon - which are farmed on the west coast 
because they grow fatter quicker - are legitimate, Walling says.

"For us (British Columbians), wild salmon needs to come first. We have a 
vibrant wild salmon industry and it has to be protected." But it's not 
protected, according to the Stanford Fisheries Policy Project, which noted 
the loss of employment along the Pacific coast for Native and non-native 
communities as wild stocks decline.

Wild Pacific salmon don't adjust well to being farmed, and most of the 
research done in Norway, Scotland and Ireland focused, naturally, on 
Atlantic salmon. So Atlantic salmon became the standard - and a threat to 
Pacific salmon.

Walling acknowledges that fish farming, in its early days in B.C., gave 
critics lots to protest. "In the 1970s and early 1980s we had small 
operations that were not well sited, they didn't have a lot of money or 
experience and there were lots of escapees."

As the industry consolidated in the 1980s - a process now underway in New 
Brunswick - "there was a focus on improving practices," Walling says. 
"There have been no significant escapes in the last three years. R and D is 
on-going to address the issues."

As Walling sees it, "Just as environmental groups focused on forests and 
Clayoquot Sound, now they've turned their attention to aquaculture. They're 
funded by some wealthy U.S. environmental foundations and it's difficult 
for our small industry to combat their attacks."

"Our industry is stalled," says David Rideout, executive director of the 
Canadian Aquaculture Industry Alliance. "The public policy makers are 
timid, in terms of decision making, and they're holding us back."

The process of getting licence approvals for fish farms under the Canadian 
Environmental Assessment Act - with federal and provincial governments 
getting in on the act - can drag on for two to four years, costing hundreds 
of thousands of dollars.

"We're not saying every site should be approved," Rideout says. "If there 
are problems, we'll address them. Tell us where we can farm. We want
action."


Recently Bloomberg News reported a Canadian study showing that wild Pacific 
salmon are polluting Alaskan lakes as they return to their home spawning 
ground. Migrating hundreds of miles from the ocean - with PCBs absorbed 
from their food contaminating their cells - they act as "biological pumps," 
University of Ottawa biologist Jules Blais said, "by transporting 
contaminants upstream, where pollutants may affect their offspring and 
predators such as bears, eagles and humans."

On the PCB question, Rideout says, "This is a serious problem for the 
industry in general. It brings about consumer confusion."

But University of Ottawa associate biology professor Jules Blais says it's 
"very difficult for Health Canada to regulate thousands and thousands of 
chemicals based on limited animal studies."

"We're environmental toxicologists, we look at the fate of pollutants in 
the environment, where they go, how they accumulate in the body. We know 
there's evidence of PCB exposure linked to declining fertility rates in 
humans and developmental affects on children exposed in utero, performing 
poorly on memory tests and having higher rates of attention deficit
disorder."

With every step up the food chain, he says, PCBs increase in concentration. 
And with different safety standards expressed by the EPA, the FDA and WHO, 
he says, it's clear that "this is an evolving situation."

No one really knows, in other words, what is a safe level.

On the policy front, Rideout says, "There are two parallel issues of equal 
importance: consistency of policy in terms of siting, and establishing an 
animal health program for fish similar to land animals. We need it in terms 
of exporting our fish around the world."

At the department of Fisheries and Oceans, scientist Sharon McGladdery, a 
fish disease specialist, says the aquatic animal health program "is in the 
developmental stages, involving industry, provinces and federal government. 
We're focussing on the health of both wild and cultured fish." A 
groundbreaking policy paper should be ready within the year.

Rideout worries that "Canada is losing market share because we can't get 
sites. We're losing our competitive edge.

``Very few places in the world are as ideal for fish farming. We have this 
huge potential in terms of water mass and the best food safety regulations 
in the world, but we need to let our industry farm."

-30-

__________________

Barry Kent MacKay
Senior Programme Coordinator: Canada
Animal Protection Institute 
www.api4animals.org