Government Memos Reveal Fish Farmers Pressured Government to Keep Sea Lice Drugs Secret (six years before biologist Alexandra Morton made it public)
by
Salmon Are Sacred
A series of government memos reveal a heated debate in 1995 over a sea louse outbreak on a farm salmon on the Fraser sockeye migration route (Okisollo Channel). In 1995, a salmon farm requested permission to use hydrogen peroxide to treat an extremely heavy outbreak of sea lice on their fish. When the Ministry of Environment, Parks and Lands (MELP) informed the company that their drug application would have to be released to the public, the fish farmer withdrew the request. When environmental groups found out about the sea lice outbreak, the BC Salmon Farmers Association called for an investigation of MELP and a guarantee that fish farmers had a right to secrecy in the future.
September 06, 1995 Don Peterson of MELP writes, “The company has withdrawn their application (for hydrogen peroxide) because they heard there was a requirement to advertise if a pesticide was going to be applied. I guess they were either afraid of the shareholders…or the public finding out... the company has asked that this request be kept strictly confidential and that all correspondence on the subject be destroyed.”
September 28, 1995 the BC Salmon Farmers Association criticized Minister Moe Sihota (MELP): “…government has an obligation to maintain confidentiality… Government is further prevented from unauthorized collection, use or disclosure of information…. puts at risk … capital investment of private citizens and individual companies…”
However, salmon farms operate in Canada’s public waters and impact a Canadian resource - wild fish.
On October 23, 1995 Earl Warnock of MELP writes, “I find it unconscionable that they (fish farmers) are only prepared to undertake measures appropriate to protect their stock health and the environment unless they can do it in a clandestine manner.... and for them and MAFF to ask us to operate with them in this way says something about the people we are dealing with.”
