Saw this on FB.
"The industry continues to spread false information about itself and it's products.
In this article, Jeremy Dunn of the BC Salmon Farmers Association said there’s a lot of rhetoric and misinformation about the industry.
Yet he feeds that rhetoric with misinformation of his own. He says:
"Atlantic salmon, as compared to several species of Pacific salmon, naturally maintains higher fats as it has the ability to spawn several times.”
That may be true in natural wild populations of Atlantic salmon (which, btw, are not native to BC) but the farmed Atlantic salmon raised in BC are never allowed to spawn. They are a single generation crop, raised from fry to market size then slaughtered, so they can never get to the stage where their "natural fats" build to the levels he implies. But they are fat ... no doubt about that. They are fat because the can't move around like normal healthy fish and their fat content, and flesh colour, is controlled by additives in their feed.
He says:
"B.C. salmon-farms creates 6,000 jobs on Vancouver Island and produces $800 million in economic activity for the province".
Wrong again Jeremy.
Recent BC aquaculture statistics compiled by the BC government show that the finfish aquaculture industry employed only 1700 people in 2011 and stated that the overall trend in employment in the industry was downward decreasing by 10% from 2000 - 2011 (see Page 33:
http://www.bcstats.gov.bc.ca/…/FisheriesAquacultureHuntingT….
Also, federal aquaculture statistics show that total aquaculture production in BC for each year over the three years period 2011 - 2013 has amounted to only around $450 million per year (range $409.1 million - 475.8 million) See:
http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/stats/aqua/aqua-prod-eng.htm"