Exclusive, 08 November 2009
Salmon farming multinationals are this week facing an unprecedented broadside from a new film which blames the industry for wrecking the environment and destroying livelihoods in Scotland, Canada and Chile.
The film accuses two leading Norwegian-owned companies, Marine Harvest and Cermaq, of spreading disease and lice to wild fish by siting their cages in the wrong places and allowing thousands of fish to escape.
This allegedly puts the jobs of shellfish farmers, local tourist businesses and others at risk, while rewarding shareholders in Norway. The fish farming industry, however, described the accusations as outdated and inaccurate.
The film, ‘Farm Salmon Exposed’, has been made by Canadian filmmaker, Damien Gilles, and is being launched at a screening in Edinburgh tomorrow as part of a global week of action. Later in the week, it is also being shown in Dundonnell and Oban in Scotland, as well as Dublin in Ireland, Santiago in Chile, Vancouver in Canada, Washington DC in the US and Oslo in Norway.
The companies on which the film focuses both have a major presence in Scotland. In 2008 Marine Harvest Scotland produced over 32,000 tonnes of salmon from 25 sea farms around the west coast, while Cermaq, trading as Mainstream Scotland, has farms across Orkney and Shetland.
The film was made for the Pure Salmon Campaign, a lobby group based in Washington DC. “Farmed Salmon Exposed lifts the lid on the can of worms of the global salmon farming industry,” said the campaign’s co-ordinator, Don Staniford.
“Norwegian multinationals are exporting environmental pollution, spreading sea lice and infectious diseases and allowing mass escapes in Canada, Chile, Scotland, Ireland and at home in Norway.”
Staniford called on the industry to shift its salmon cages away from the migratory corridors used by wild fish. And he urged the adoption of “closed containment technology” to prevent caged fish from coming into contact with wild fish.
He pointed out that six salmon farm sites in Shetland had been hit by the deadly disease, infectious salmon anaemia, this year. And that in September almost 60,000 salmon had escaped from a fish farm on Loch Striven in Argyll run by Lighthouse Caledonia, which was spun off from Marine Harvest in 2007.
Amongst those featured in the new film is Brian Fraser, a ghillie from Wester Ross. “Norwegian multinational salmon farming companies are still killing wild salmon,” he said.
“Our sea trout are all but gone by the spread of sea lice, parasites, infectious diseases and escapes. Fish farming is pouring more wastes into our pristine Scottish coast than the whole of the Scottish nation put together.”
He called on the Scottish government to provide funding to move fish farms away from fishing rivers to help wild stocks recover and save local jobs. “Will we never learn the warnings from all around the world by top scientists who are telling us the same story?” he asked. “Fish farming is killing the environment and is unsustainable in the long term.”
The Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation, which represents fish farming companies in Scotland, attacked the trailer which has been made available online. It “appears to be predictable, outdated and factually inaccurate,” said the organisation’s spokesman.
He accused the filmmakers of being “way off the mark” on the amount of feed needed to produce salmon. “The internationalisation of trade is a fundamental feature of the modern world,” he said. “With the European Union currently importing 60% of its seafood, the continued global supply is essential for food security.”
But the film was backed by animal rights campaigners concerned about the number of seals shot by salmon farmers. “We are proud to support this initiative to expose the global damage caused by these floating factory fish farms,” said John Robins from the Save Our Seals Fund.
“They blight the Scottish coast, poison our seas, kill our wildlife, deplete scarce wild fish stocks and turn the king of fish into little more than the aquatic equivalent of the battery hen.”
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