Last Monday afternoon, close to 100 people gathered in one of the myriad rooms at the International Boston Seafood Show for a panel discussion on the future of farmed salmon. There were the basic updates, forecasts for the future and, not surprisingly, some tough questions from the audience.
On the panel were Jason Paine, general manager of Multiexport Foods USA; Katherine Bostick, senior program officer at the World Wildlife Fund's Aquaculture Program (she also moderated the panel discussion); Mary Ellen Walling, executive director of the BC Salmon Farmers Association; and Nell Halse, VP of communications for New Brunswick-based Cooke Aquaculture and its operating arm, True North Salmon Co.
The first issue addressed was whether the recent earthquake in Chile had any impact on that country's salmon farming operations. The quake did not affect Multiexport Foods, which owns salmon farms 400 miles north of the quake's epicenter, except for some tense moments the day of the earthquake when communication was spotty, Paine said. The earthquake happened on a Saturday morning, but by Wednesday the company was back to normal, flying farmed salmon out of Santiago. The earthquake had "virtually no impact," he said.
Cooke Aquaculture, which also owns a salmon farm in Chile, was not severely impacted by the quake, besides some of the expected disruptions to transportation and logistics, Halse said.
The conversation then shifted to an overall assessment of Chile's salmon farming industry. The Infectious Salmon Anemia outbreak in that country has been "nothing short of catastrophe," Paine said. He said this year will be the most difficult, but his future outlook is positive. There's been no more cases of ISA reported in the past year and the number of smolts being put in the water is on the way up. However, it's cost the industry there billions of dollars. "It's been a very expensive lesson to learn," he said.
Halse said Cooke's Chile operation is expecting "significant recovery." She pointed out that ISA is very difficult to eradicate, but can be addressed through better management. Given the fact that ISA first appeared in New Brunswick waters -- Cooke's native territory -- in 1996, and did significant damage to the salmon farms there and in Down East Maine, the company has dealt with this problem before. Halse said ISA has not been a serious problem in New Brunswick and Maine since then because of the measures undertaken to keep it under control. Cooke Aquaculture operates on a three-bay management system. At any given time, one bay is reserved for new smolts, another for market-size fish, while another lies fallow for a minimum of four months. The system is very similar to that used by terrestrial farms.
A question from the audience raised the worrying issue of sea lice gaining an increased resistance to Slice, the commercial name for the pesticide emamectin benzoate. Halse acknowledged that Cooke Aquaculture has noticed the reduced effectiveness of the pesticide. She said it highlighted the necessity for a broader, fully-integrated system for pest management, which includes not just pesticides, but operational changes like the company's bay management system. Cooke Aquaculture is also planning to bathe roughly two million market-ready caged salmon in the pesticide deltamethrin, marketed as AlphaMax, according to a recent story in The Working Waterfront. Halse said in an ideal world "we'd rather not use chemicals." She said Cooke is also considering alternative methods, from using hydrogen peroxide to farming cleaner species.
Walling, from the BC salmon farming industry, added that the over use of chemicals is a very serious concern for fish farmers, not only because of the risk that pests will develop a resistance, but "frankly it drives up costs."
One question from an audience member associated with Pure Salmon, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to improving the way salmon is produced, created a heated, though brief, discussion. The question was who is legally liable in a case where farmed salmon in Canada, treated with chemicals approved for use in that country, are exported to a country, such as the United States, where that chemical is not approved for use. Walling said she was not a lawyer and therefore could not answer the liability question, but "if Pure Salmon has an opportunity to take a company to court, I'm sure you'll do that," she said. Often, she said, the chemicals are not approved in the United States purely because the U.S. fish farming industry is still so small that the chemical companies have not seen it worthwhile financially to go through the process to get the pesticides approved.
The issue of using chemicals approved in one country and not another does create unique challenges for a company like Cooke Aquaculture, which farms salmon in the Canadian province of New Brunswick and the neighboring U.S. state of Maine. "It is a challenge because we don't have the same regulations, but we farm in the same body of water," Halse said.
As far as the next big thing in the salmon farming industry, the consensus of the panel seemed to be a focus on value-added products, from processed foods to innovative and convenient packaging.
Katherine Bostick, senior program officer at the World Wildlife Fund's Aquaculture Program, also said that organization is a month away from releasing a draft copy of its sustainable salmon farming standards. It's the result of a process begun five years ago.
Speaking of standards, a member of the audience directed a question at Halse about True North Salmon Co.'s marketing its salmon under the Seafood Trust Eco Label certification. The audience member said she knew several people who were unsuccessful in obtaining the standards the certification are based on, which raises questions of transparency. Halse said the certification standards are not the company's to disclose. She directed questions to Global Trust, but said she had heard the group was disclosing the standards.
Corey Peet, aquaculture campaigner for the David Suzuki Foundation, used the floor not to ask a question, but to comment on what he believes is the aquaculture industry's nonchalant attitude that reaching sustainability -- which he defined as reconciling economic, social and environmental issues -- will be a piece of cake.
He singled out the BC salmon farming industry as an example. Claiming it would be easier if there were one or two issues that needed reconciling, Peet said the industry has at least eight issues that need to be addressed. "I don't think these sustainability issues are easy to resolve," he said.
Another audience member from the David Suzuki Foundation also brought up David Suzuki's recent visit to one of Cooke Aquaculture's New Brunswick salmon farms. His criticism was that from what he had heard from Suzuki, not much has changed in the salmon farming business in the last five years, but now, all of a sudden, True North is marketing its salmon under the Seafood Trust Eco Label certification.
Halse disagreed with the assessment and negative tone the audience member assigned to David Suzuki's visit to Cooke's operations. She said Suzuki's visit was a very meaningful experience for the company. And, despite an acknowledgment that more needs to be done, she said it's that kind of positive dialogue is exactly what is needed. "That kind of approach will change the industry," she said.
She stressed that the dialogue needs to change from critics always focusing on the negative and the past, instead of focusing on the positive changes that the salmon farming industry is making. And they are making progress, she said. "We're on the road [to sustainability] and we're going to keep going," Halse said.
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* Originally posted to The New Aquaculture on Monday March 22nd.
March 23, 2010
