Farmed salmon

Sierra fisher wrote:

I try to buy only wild salmon so this doens't bother me. what does though
is whether the raising of large numbers will effect our fisheries. The west
coast of Ireland used to be a good a good Altantic salmon fishery. Now
there are are few fish caught on this coast. the story is that there is too
much crap and too many disease associated with the massive fish pens
stationed in the estuaries. the wild salmon apparently cannot survive in
this situation.
there are apparently large Atlantic salmon pens in British Columbia, and
some have escaped. I have seen a report of one caught in the wild.


Escapes from ocean pens are a common occurrence. From reports I have read,
there are some streams where they have successfully spawned.

What worries me more are the "super" fish that have been developed.
There's a genetically manipulated Atlantic Salmon that has been
developed by a company on the East coast. So far they haven't gotten
approval for farming the fish off the coast. However, there is lots of
money behind the company.

Willi

"Tim Lysyk" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:7RILb.478$Eq.22@clgrps12...
Svend Tang-Petersen wrote:


What they were concerned about is a chemical called dioxin. However the
latest I heard on the
news last night was that the measured amounts were so small that it made
any kinds of statictics
too inaccurate to be something to be really concerned about. (I think
the
latter statement came from
the FDA).

I found the following article after I replied to your post. It appears
there is some concern over the validity of the study. I may have to
break down and actually read it.

http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/01/09/salmon040109

Tim Lysyk


There is a history of farmed salmon defenses, and the repudiation of various
studies of such by industry funded (SURPRISE SURPRISE!) scientists,
goverment bodies, and the like. None are either reasonable or logical.
The damage to local ecologies is quite easily apparent and provable, even to
a complete layman, and the levels of various poisons in the fish is also
relatively easily provable.

Some of these studies in other ( non-farmed) fish, ( especially "fatty" fish
like salmonids and eels), have also revealed high toxicological levels.
There are many places now where the consumption of such fish is proscribed.
This is mainly due to large scale pollution, but there are other reasons,
especially with farmed fish.

Practically the main argument in favour of this type of farming, or against
controlling it more closely, is that this would result in lost jobs.

What some idiotic bureacrat has to say about it is quite immaterial to me.
Most seem blithely unaware of the studies extant, and stick to their guns no
matter what happens.

The extremely rapid decline of other wild fish, ( notably sea trout=
anadromous browns) is also directly traceable to the massively increased
incidence of parasitic organisms in the vicinity of such farms, ( which are
often situated in river mouths, estuaries etc) and the fact that they thus
contaminate whole river systems.

Severe contamination and specification of the gene pool is also a direct
result of such fish escaping. In more than a few rivers, there are
virtually no "wild" salmon left, and the "farmed" variety are simply not
hardy enough to survive the normal rigours of a salmons´s life, quite apart
from various other severe shortcomings.

TL
MC

Svend Tang-Petersen wrote:

In gradschool we once did a calculation to see how much coffe you had to drink
to die from instant
coffein poisoning. I think it came down to about 20L (or ~6G) in 20min.

Geez.

I'd better cut down.

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

From: Svend Tang-Petersen

So
do the northern european fish show higher level
because they have been wrapped in plastics longer ?

The article I read in the morning paper stated that the fish tested in the
study they quoted were raised in North America.

IIRC, the human body stores Dioxin, so levels can build up over a period of
time.

I don't see where all of this amounts to an attack on Scandinavian fish
farming.


George Adams

"All good fishermen stay young until they die, for fishing is the only dream of
youth that doth not grow stale with age."
---- J.W Muller

Svend,

I haven't read the paper either.

From news reports and interviews, the investigators apparently tested toxin
levels in farmed fish from all fish farming nations with Norway the highest
and Chile the lowest. A probable explanation for this result apparently is
that the feed, pellets made from ground up "garbage" fish, is most highly
contaminated in Europe because of centuries of pollution of the North
Atlantic compared to decades of pollution in the south Pacific. Producing
the pellets concentrates toxins.

One of the significant things about the study is that this is apparently the
first one with a large number of samples - much, much larger than the
studies on which the US's FDA and the regulatory bodies of other nations
based their laws. Many thousands of samples versus only hundreds.
Shocking, but I guess I should not be surprised considering how few cattle
are tested for BSE in the USA and Canada. The scientists for governments
and the fish farming industry are not arguing against the validity of the
test results; their arguments seem to be with risk assessment. From what I
remember, Science is one of the reputable and trusted scientific journals
around. I would expect that any paper published in it would have received a
thorough peer review and approval from some kind of publishing committee or
board. That would not guarantee that everything published in a journal is
true; as I recall, papers proving Cold Fusion were published in learned
journals.

Evidently, the researchers who did the study were worried not only about the
Dioxin that you mention, but with the total contaminant level including, but
not limited to, Dioxin, PCB's, DDT, and others. If I recall the news
stories and interviews correctly, the principle investigators are
recommending a meal of farmed salmon no more frequently than once every two
months.

Here in North America, wild salmon means Pacific salmon, so the comparison
in toxin levels would be for farmed Atlantic salmon versus wild Pacific
salmon. As far as I know, very little if any Atlantic salmon is sold here,
and rightly so; it is on the verge of becoming an endangered species.

Best regards,

Yuji Sakuma


"Svend Tang-Petersen" wrote in message
...

On 10 Jan 2004 04:01:45 GMT, ojunk (George Adams) wrote:

From: Svend Tang-Petersen

So
do the northern european fish show higher level
because they have been wrapped in plastics longer ?

The article I read in the morning paper stated that the fish tested in the
study they quoted were raised in North America.

IIRC, the human body stores Dioxin, so levels can build up over a period of
time.

I don't see where all of this amounts to an attack on Scandinavian fish
farming.


George Adams

"All good fishermen stay young until they die, for fishing is the only dream of
youth that doth not grow stale with age."
---- J.W Muller

According to the report I read in Nature one of the main toxins was PCB.
In a study here in the mid-west (USA) PCBs have been found to negatively
affect the cognitive development of children who come from families that
ate large quantities PCB contanimated fish, mostly salmon from the Great
Lakes. (Of course the study should be taken with a grain of salt, as these
were the children of fishermen and their cognitive development would be
expected to vary from the norm.) The report also made recommendations on
how the problem could be addressed. Unfortunately, none of the solutions
proposed were that the salmon farms be abolished and that the watersheds of
wild salmon be cleaned up enough to allow normal production of salmon. That
would be my preferred fix, but what do I know?

g.c.

http://www.nature.com/nsu/040105/040105-10.html

It wouldn't surprise me to see Mad Cow Disease show up in fish
next. Some idiot could grind up the diseased cows for fish food.
Ernie

On Sat, 10 Jan 2004 16:03:26 GMT, "Ernie"
wrote:

It wouldn't surprise me to see Mad Cow Disease show up in fish
next. Some idiot could grind up the diseased cows for fish food.
Ernie


In the Nature report they did point out that animal by-products were part
of the food that salmon are fed.

g.c.

"Ernie" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
m...
It wouldn't surprise me to see Mad Cow Disease show up in fish
next. Some idiot could grind up the diseased cows for fish food.
Ernie



This is already happening. The sources of some meals and pellets are
suspect. Part of the reason for the high concentrations of various poisons
in farmed fish is due to contaminated feed.There are also various cases of
disease extant, which have not hitherto occurred in wild fish. Quite apart
from anything else, farmed fish are heavily dosed with various chemicals,
medicines, and hormones. It is most unlikely that this results in healthy
food. Quite apart from the effects on the fish themselves, and the
environment in general.

TL
MC

wrote...
snipped
Unfortunately, none of the solutions
proposed were that the salmon farms be abolished and that the watersheds of
wild salmon be cleaned up enough to allow normal production of salmon. That
would be my preferred fix, but what do I know?

This is something that I feel very strongly about. Does anybody know
of any lobbying organizations that oppose salmon farming and yet are
not environmental/extreme liberal whackos?

Not that there's anything wrong with being a liberal.
--
Warren (sorry for the mention of "liberal," but I was thinking of
groups like PETA and the "save the fish" types of idiots)
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