Spencer Evans leaving Creative Salmon
Spencer Evans has been the General Manager of Tofino-based Creative Salmon Company Ltd. through a turbulent period in the company's history. Later this summer he is leaving to take a position with Tassal Group Ltd., the largest salmon farming company in Tasmania. He leaves behind a tight-knit organization that has been hell-bent to achieve organic certification of its Pacific farmed salmon.
Creative Salmon is one of a few companies that have taken the initiative to establish an organic standard for farmed salmon in the Pacific Northwest. As with any other issue having to do with farmed salmon, this one has also met with a flurry of opposition from environmental groups that can not fathom the thought of having salmon grown in fish pens classified as "organic". Despite using the domestic Chinook salmon (the rest of the industry has been criticised for using imported Atlantic salmon), not having used antibiotics on their harvest fish since October, 2001 and using natural pigment in its feed along with practising low densities, Creative Salmon has yet to achieve its goal of organic certification.
In July, 2005 Spencer Evans and Creative Salmon became headline news, as the relatively small salmon farming company took on one of the most active environmentalists in British Columbia at the time. Accusing Mr. Don Staniford of defamation, Creative sued Stanifiord who had accused Creative Salmon of lying about its antibiotic usage (or lack thereof). In January, 2007 a B.C. Supreme Court judge agreed, concluding that Mr. Staniford's statements were "motivated by malice because he was attempting to build opposition to Creative Salmon's objective of obtaining organic certification for its fish".
The company was given the 2005 Ocean Products Business of the Year Award in the category Ocean Products of the Year, and the following year Creative was awarded the Business of the Year Award by the Positive Aquaculture Awareness Group.
Over the past year, Spencer Evans and company fish health personnel also had to stick-handle a case where inspectors from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had detained a shipment of the Company's fish due to a positive sample for trace levels of Malachite Green. On February 01, 2008 the Company received notice that the fish had been cleared, and that there was no reason to detain the fish.
Mr. Evans should be able to enjoy the climate in Australia, both climate wise and socially, as fish farmers are a respected and welcome part of the Tasmanian society. Tassal produces some 70 per cent of Tasmania's 17,000 tonne annual production of mostly Atlantic salmon.
