BC Salmon Farmers Association warns that Trudeau’s pledge “ignores facts”.
More voices are coming out to show their frustration with the Liberals pledge to effectively end open-net salmon farming by 2025.
On Wednesday, SalmonBusiness reported that on the East Coast, the Atlantic Canada Fish Farmers Association (ACFFA) call the move to closed containment systems “nonsense”.
The BC Salmon Farmers Association (BCSFA) represents the views of Mowi Canada West, Cermaq Canada, Grieg Seafood BC and more including feed manufacturers Skretting, aquaculture equipment makers AKVA as well as processor Brown’s Bay Packing Company.
In a post on its site, the BCSFA wrote that: “The Liberal Party’s aquaculture platform commitment to ‘transition from open net-pen salmon farming to closed containment systems by 2025’ is destructive, careless and flies in the face of making decisions about aquaculture based on science and facts. At a time when leaders should be focusing on climate change and climate action, the Liberal Party is looking to shut down the seafood farming method with the lowest carbon footprint and suggesting its transition to a technology that depends on manufactured energy. This move would have significant environmental repercussions. It would also have economic repercussions for the families of 7,000 middle-class workers in B.C, negatively impacting the health and wellness of coastal communities”.
It also questioned the validity of the Liberal Party’s aims.
“While closed-containment salmon farming has been successful at a smaller scale – and research and trials continue – no-one in the world has successfully raised a large number of salmon in a commercial-scale land or sea-based closed containment operation. The technology is currently developing and we certainly anticipate closed containment systems will play a larger role in the future. But to forcefully mandate a five-year ‘transition’ is unachievable, especially when there is no business case or transition plan behind it. This is a recipe for industry stagnation and significant unemployment”.
