A new 'Sustainability Report' launched today by the Global Salmon Initiative is not worth the paper it is written on claims the Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture (GAAIA).
Listen to Don Staniford, Director of GAAIA, speaking on the BBC Radio Scotland's 'News At One' show (5 June 2015) - online here (starts at 18 min 40 secs)
"The Global Salmon Initiative's new 'Sustainability Report' smacks of the Emperor's New Clothes," said Don Staniford, Director of GAAIA. "Sustainable salmon farming is a sham, scam and consumer con. The so-called 'transparent' data is so wafer-thin that it is non-existent! Shamefully, this report completely ignores the toxic pollution from Scottish salmon farms, Scotland's infectious disease crisis and only includes two of Scotland's salmon farming companies (ignoring lice-infested Loch Duart, Wester Ross Fisheries, Scottish Sea Farms and the Scottish Salmon Company, for example). Even such blatant green-washing cannot hide the naked truth - that mortality rates are leaping like a lice-infested farmed salmon with a staggering one in seven farmed salmon dead at Marine Harvest Scotland. Sea lice levels are still alarmingly high with 2014 the worst year on record and both Marine Harvest Scotland and Grieg Seafood breaching lice limits for seven out of the twelve months." [1]
Read the report in full online here
"The whole concept of 'sustainable salmon farming' is an oxymoron," continued Staniford. "The farming of carnivores such as salmon is, by definition, inherently unsustainable. The global salmon farming industry is draining our oceans of wild fish as a feed supply to fuel its insatiable appetite - it takes anywhere between 3 to 9 tonnes of wild fish to produce one tonne of farmed salmon! Consequently, the words 'salmon farming' and 'sustainable' don't even belong in the same sentence let alone a whole report devoted to sustainable salmon."
"Put lipstick on a pig and it's still a pig," concluded Staniford. "By discharging untreated sewage effluent directly into our global ocean, salmon farms are the piggeries of the sea. Not to mention the fact that from 1 June 2013, farmed salmon was permitted by the EU to be fed on chicken and pig products. Stop pigging out on farmed salmon - join the global consumer boycott now!"
For more background on the Aquaculture Stewardship Council and WWF's partnership with Marine Harvest read "Abominable Salmon Council - Buyer Beware!" and "WWF Greenwashes Marine Harvest".
Download press release - "EXPOSED: Scottish Salmon's Sustainability Scam" - with Notes to Editors in full online here
Includes:
Mortality rates are rising - with Norwegian-owned Marine Harvest (Scotland's largest operator) reporting a more than doubling in mortality rate from 6.4% in 2013 to 14.4% in 2014 (i.e. one in seven dead farmed salmon).
Lice levels are rising - with Marine Harvest breaching lice limits for 7 out of 12 months in 2014 (up from zero in 2013):
Seal killing continues - with Marine Harvest reporting 0.15 dead marine mammals (i.e. one dead marine mammal per seven sites) during 2014 and 2013.
Grieg Seafood claim to have "no data available" for 2013 and 2014 despite data published by the Scottish Government revealing that Grieg Seafood (via their Scottish subsidiary Hjaltland) is one of Scottish salmon's biggest seal killers (read more via "Lethal Scottish Farmed Salmon: Serial Seal Killers Named and Shamed!" and "Almost 150 Seals Shot Under Licence").
The absence of Leroy/Salmar (Norwegian owners of Scottish Sea Farms) from the report also denies the public from further details of the dead humpback whale reported drowned in a salmon farm net off the Isle of Mull in July 2014 (read more via "Humpback whale drowned off Mull 'after getting trapped'" and "Salmon Farming Kills Whales!").
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