No, your argument was against feedlot rearing in general and a food system that will fly an orange halfway round the world and on those points I agree.
No, again, that part of my argument was against
the argument that these open net salmon farms are
necessary to meet the demands for salmon. Not against the farms themselves, which I explained I am against for the fact that they are farming an exotic species in an open net pens that discharges its environmental outputs directly into the surrounding environment.
Get your numbers right. As I suggested in my previous post, the cumulative economic output of direct, indirect and induced benefits from salmon farming, a sum of $699 million, is approaching the cumulative total from those same sources for the combined output of the commercial salmon harvest, $366 million, and the sport salmon fishing sector, $419 million.
Full Time Equivalent cumulative employment for salmon farming is 2,900, the commercial salmon sector is 2,300 jobs and the sport salmon sector is 3400. All numbers for 2005; sourced from tables on page 2 of the last link in the list I posted previously. While employment in the sport salmon sector is roughly 15% greater, it is also seasonal rather than year round as in the salmon farming sector.
Economic output including multiplier effects for salmon farming is roughly 65% higher than for sport salmon. Regardless of your personal take on the accuracy of the measurement, the numbers are what they are.
The numbers I gave came from the link you provided... so right back at you.
There are many potential causes for the declines in salmon stocks including those I've summarized and many more possibilities including climate change, North Pacific salmon ranching and possibly even a new endemic virus that the newly adopted darling of the reactionary campaign claims to have found.
Exactly. We have been struggling for decades with these other potential causes, and then in comes these salmon farms with their exotic species being raised in HUGE concentrations (and getting larger all the time) in open net pens that discharge their environmental outputs directly into the surrounding environment (the same environment that these wild fish, already weakened by these other impacts we have both mentioned) and we are supposed to turn a blind eye to any potential harm they might be doing and accept that no harm will come of it.
To ignore any or all of them and suggest that the blame must lie with salmon farms is to ignore the realities of the situation. It betrays a lack of understanding of the biological dynamic of salmon and a lack of objectivity in analyzing the problem. It is for that reason that i suggested you educate yourself in the biology of both the fish and the environment.
Who said anything about ignoring any or all of the other possible causes and placing the blame solely on salmon farms (another Red Herring)? Why does it have to be
all the salmon farms fault before we can ask them to stop causing the harm they are causing, however small it might be? So since we accept that the decline in wild fish is caused by more than one activity, we must now accept that they are doomed because we cannot blame any one activity for causing all the harm? That makes a lot of sense. We fought the forest companies for decades to stop clear cutting right to the banks of salmon streams. I guess we need to start allowing them to do that again since the salmon declines cannot be blamed solely on them.
Waste ... becomes an input to the food web.
Exactly, it is also frequently covered in antibiotics and pesticides, so any amount is going to impact that food web as the non target species consume it
There are very good reasons why Atlantic Salmon were selected as the primary species for culture. The primary one is that they are not Pacific Salmon, and because of that, have some major differences in disease susceptibility. The benefit that offers is that many pathogens that may cause outbreaks in farms are pathogens that are not troublesome to Pacifics and thus will have minimal effect on the stocks. It also means that they cannot successfully breed with Pacifics. That allows BC to evade the two factors that have caused the greatest damage to wild salmon stocks in Norway, Scotland and even Eastern Canada where the cultured species is also the native species. The import protocols have prevented the importation of any non-native pathogens and the imported Atlantics have not established any successful breeding populations on this coast even though there have been escapes just as they couldn't after all the attempted introductions up to a century ago. An understanding of biology and farm/environment interaction would have helped you to see that.
Just because Atlantics have not been successful yet, it does not mean they will not be successful in the future. A simple rudimentary understanding of biology could have helped you see that. Also, while second generation wild adults have never been captured yet, there have been documented catches of second generation young, so they are able to breed in BC. Furthermore, while a successful population has not been established yet, the repeated escape, year after year, of even small numbers of fish (this is documented and the numbers will only grow as the industry expands production faster than it improves the security of the pens) has the same impact as the establishment of a stable population would.
There are environmental outputs from everything including yourself. That fact in itself is meaningless. It is the volume and nature of those discharges that need to be examined to evaluate their harm or harmlessness. What you call "environmental outputs" is primarily feces, a biodegradable product that actually forms food for other species. It is well dispersed by the currents and tides so that concentration remains very low...
Wow, I think that is exactly the argument Victoria uses to justify the dumping of raw sewage into Georgia Strait. No one really believes that do they? Do you really expect me to believe the feces of a farmed fish, a fish penned with thousands of other fish in close quarters, and that receive more than "a very small medication[/chemical] component" in its feed, is harmless to the organisms that consume it? Where is the scientific proof that this is true? I am afraid I need inarguable proof please.
There will be a very small chemical component from farm use chemicals; the concentration will be very low because of dilution and the need to keep the farm environment habitable by the fish. There will on occasion also be a very small medication component. It will consist of only that small portion of food not eaten.; medication is delivered to fish in feed and when eaten, is metabolized by the fish in order that it may enter the blood stream and serve it's function. Since the amount of medication fed to fish is very small, the residuals in the environment will be minuscule.
Where is the documented proof that this is true? Where are the scientific studies that showed that the output of these farms is harmless? Why were the farmers not required to provide the "inarguable proof" that no harm will come from their existence before they were given license to practice. Why is the burden of proof on those that suspect that the residuals in the environment are not "miniscule" and that the impacts will not be insignificant? It is very hard to catch a dead salmon that has been killed by a lice bloom on a farm (we tend to only catch the ones that survived), this is why the scientists have a hard time assessing the impact the farms are having. It is easier to catch the adults returning, but these are obviously the stronger fish that managed to survive, so they are not as useful to the studies are they?
I'm still waiting to hear good reasons why they should not.
Because they are farming an exotic species in open net pens that release their
harmful environmental outputs directly into the surrounding environment (something most reasonable people now accept is not a good idea, except of course, for those that stand to save money by dumping their waste). The fact that you can make a lot of money doing this is the ONLY reason I have heard so far for why we should have them.
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Topic: Lethal virus from European salmon found in wild BC salmon (Read 290964 times)