May 24, 2010
Dear Minister Steve Thomson, Ministry of Agriculture and Lands (MAL):
I am writing to request attendance at farm salmon harvests to assess unlawful consumption/destruction of wild fish such as commercial fishermen are required.
On May 19, I met with your assistants Harvey Sasaki and R. J. Senko and MAL scientists Drs. Roth and Sheppard. Our conversation raised several concerns.
First, your scientists still think stickleback are an important source of sea lice infection on juvenile wild salmon. This politically favorable hypothesis has been long debunked by scientists, including a DFO paper reporting that sea lice cannot survive on sticklebacks (Jones et al. 2006). It is unacceptable that MAL scientists refuse to accept scientific opinion on a subject of considerable public interest.
Second, international scientists warn that farm lice drug resistance is a growing global problem, but your team was unable to verbalize any precautions underway to protect BC. Drug resistance means fish farms switch to toxic bath treatments that are released directly into the ocean. Such a drug, Salmosan, is already advertised in Northern Aquaculture “in response to the serious and growing problems with sea lice.”
It is in the public interest for you to prevent lice drug resistance to protect BC fisheries from toxic bath chemicals.
I was told to defer to Dr. Sheppard’s opinion that drug resistance has not occurred in BC, but he could not produce a single test result. Senior scientist, Dr. Larry Dill recently testified: “I will comment on the resistance to SLICE first. I felt that Dr. Sheppard's commentary on that was highly irresponsible and very unscientific when he said there was no evidence for it... … contrary to the absolute nonsense claimed by provincial veterinarian Mark Shepherd there are a rather large number of credible scientists myself included who disagree with him when he says there is insufficient information to suggest that lice on farms is affecting pacific salmon in a detrimental way.” (Federal Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans May 12, 2010).
Minister Thomsen, the advice from your team is not credible and could be seen as unreasonably supportive of corporate interests. Downsizing the Norwegian salmon farm industry is the only way to prevent negative impact on BC. The MAL Crown Lands mission statement is … to provide the greatest benefits for British Columbians (http://www.al.gov.bc.ca/clad/). As such many fish farm leases must be rescinded. You can protect aquaculture jobs with the arising Canadian solutions.
The public wants their towns to thrive and thus want wild salmon. Corruption allegations are surfacing at the BC Rail trial concerning Liberal government payment to people to disrupt salmon farm protests. There are many reasons you should re-examine your assessment of Norwegian salmon farm impact on BC and allow public scrutiny.
I await your response.
Alexandra Morton, www.salmonaresacred.org
