Salmon Farming in the West Coast of Canada
Today, most of the salmon we eat is farmed. The controversy over farmed versus wild salmon has been ongoing in British Columbia since the first salmon farm was built in the nineteen seventies. What is salmon farming? Salmon farming is raising salmon from egg to market. The salmon are born and nurtured in fresh water hatcheries for one year and then sent to salt water net pens to continue growing. Salmon are then raised in salt water farms for about eighteen to twenty four months. With this system of increasing the population of salmon, it is clearly a misconception that salmon farming can replace wild salmon in the West Coast. This is because the economic impact of salmon farming is overrated, it…show more content… About ninety percent of British Columbia’s salmon farms are owned by three Norwegian multinationals, while the wild salmon economy is made up of hundreds of small fishing charters, lodges, first nation fishing, and commercial fishing ventures. Foreign owned companies prove to bring little benefit to the British Columbia economy because profits are most likely to leave the province when the foreign multinationals control a domestic industry. As a foreign owned company, it will not have a head office in British Columbia and the all the high level job opportunities for British Columbians hence become unavailable. (Farmed and Dangerous) The expansion of salmon farming also creates no or few new jobs because salmon farms are becoming increasingly mechanized and therefore needing less workers. The BC Salmon Farmers Association claims that salmon farming generates six thousand jobs. But an independent economic analysis argues that they are only two thousand nine hundred jobs created. (Farmed and Dangerous) In British Columbia, the surplus of farmed salmon has caused a dramatic drop in the price paid for wild salmon. As fishermen tried to make a living by pursuing a bigger catch, the wild stocks suffer and diminishes. Overall, the economic impact of salmon farming is…show more content… George Mateljan, founder of Health Valley Foods, says that farmed fish is “far inferior” to the wild counterparts. “Despite being much fattier, farmed fish provide less usable beneficial omega three fats than wild fish,” he says. As well, wild salmon contains twenty percent more protein and twenty percent less fat than farmed raised salmon. (Larry, West) Today, most of the farmed salmon we eat contain high levels of PCBs, antibiotics, and other contaminates. PCBs are the persistent cancer – causing chemicals that contaminate the environment and the food supply. Studies have found that PCB concentrations in farm raised salmon on average have almost eight times higher the concentrations than wild salmon. (Getting your Omega- 3s vs. avoiding those PCB’s). The PCBs in farm – raised salmon come from the feed, which is made from smaller fish like herring, anchovies, and sardines. Also farmers use antibiotics to prevent fish from infecting each other with various diseases. When eating farm raised salmon, some of these antibiotics can enter your body’s system as well. In turn, lead to antibiotics resistance. Since farmed salmon eat a diet of pellets, colourants are added to the feed to create that appeling salmon colour. There is a concern that this dyes used in fish feed may cause eye defects and retina