BAD TRACK RECORD

Re: Barb Dean-simmons’ July 2 article, “Salmon burger sales fuelling aquaculture expansion in Atlantic Canada.” When it comes to Cooke Aquaculture’s aspirations of fuelling expansion with a new product, salmon burgers, a few things to keep in mind:

1. Despite protestations of innocence, Cooke subsidiary Kelly Cove was convicted in 2013 of using banned chemical cypermethrin to control sea lice in their New Brunswick pens. Hundreds of lobsters died. Cooke paid a halfmillion-dollar fine, one of the largest ever levied for an environmental offence in Canada.

2. When one of Cooke’s Washington State fish farms collapsed in 2017, initially they blamed a solar eclipse and low-balled escaped fish at a few thousand. In the end, state agencies said the escapes were more like 250,000 Atlantic salmon and placed blame squarely on Cooke’s dismal maintenance record. Washington then did what Nova Scotia should do: banned open-net pens.

3. Typical of fish farming worldwide, close to half the fish in open-net pens off Newfoundland’s south coast, Cooke’s included, die in captivity. Why? Low oxygen due to ever-warming oceans, ISA (infectious salmon anemia) and other pathogens, sea lice. Farming fish in cages in the ocean is risky (though highly profitable) business.

Nova Scotia is currently engaged in a regulatory review of this industry. Question is, should we tweak the regulations or join Washington, British Columbia — indeed jurisdictions all over the world — and get the pens out of the water and onto the land into responsible, closed containment operations? Clearly, the answer is the latter.

Geoff Leboutillier, Glen Haven