Salmon farmers and environmentalists fighting over access to industry data
Opinion
In an ironic twist of events, some of the dozens of environmental groups operating in British Columbia are making a big stink about the lack of access to information about fish health issues like sea lice on salmon farms, while at the same time, most of the farms in the province are reporting their sea lice levels on their publicly accessible web sites, something that no salmon farming jurisdiction is required to do. The formal reporting to governments has been through the accumulation of regional data on a monthly or quarterly basis- just like the salmon farmers in Norway are doing. There are trigger levels in place in both countries, where a certain average number of sea lice must result in some form of managerial action such as harvesting or treatment, and all of this activity must be recorded and kept for auditing purposes.
All salmon farming companies in B.C. employ the services of qualified veterinarians, and every salmon farm or private hatchery must have a government approved Fish Health Management Plan in place. This is not the case with government-supported hatcheries for “wild” salmon, however, and the T. Buck Suzuki Foundation makes no request for information about the health status of some ~500 million Pacific salmon produced and intentionally released from various salmon hatcheries and enhancement facilities into the wild every year. “The government now has little-to-no oversight of the industry and as such, has essentially abdicated any responsibility for industry’s impact on the environment”, a news release from Ecojustice lawyer Randy Christensen stated.
The B.C. Salmon Farmers Association meanwhile stated that due to the regulatory limbo that the industry is faced with in view of the responsibility for aquaculture being in the process of shifting from the province to the federal government, the salmon farming companies will continue “to share the information collected through their extensive database with the provincial government – and fish health staff continue to visit farms to ensure compliance with the Fish Health Management Plans”. The industry veterinarians- who work under a professional client confidentiality relationship- have recommended that the industry should switch to a third party audit system during the period of regulatory transition.
The federal government has indicated that the new regulations likely will allow for additional transparency with respect to industry data- particularly data that is of an environmental nature. Given the high standards under which B.C. salmon farms are operating, this might not be a bad thing.
