NEWS

Thursday, May 17, 2007

BC Legislature committee urges pursuit of closed-contained salmon farming

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Canadian Press reporter Scott Sutherland covers a BC Legislature report released today that recommends closed-containment fish farming as the only safe and feasible way to raise Atlantic salmon.

The committee found scientists continue to bitterly disagree over whether raising Atlantic and chinook salmon in pens that are open to the ocean is dangerous to wild fish and the ecosystem in general.

So rather than wait for consensus, the report says, the provincial government needs to step in.

“From a public policy point of view, we must act and act immediately,” says the report, released in the legislature yesterday.

Though the technology and practice of raising farmed salmon in closed-containment systems immersed in saltwater has not yet been developed, the committee recommend funding the pursuit of just such a system. “It is our expectation that ocean-based closed-containment technologies developed in B.C. will be licensed and sold around the world,” the report says.