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Salmon farming is één grote rotzooi en vervuilt de oceanen

Staniford, a Liverpudlian who has lived in Scotland for many years, argued that cramming carnivorous, migratory fish into crowded tanks and releasing toxins, diseases and parasites into the surrounding waters was inherently unsustainable. Unless the global salmon farming industry drastically changed course, he said, it would collapse.

This week I asked Staniford what had changed since then. Little, he replied, except that the farms had got bigger, the industry was spending even more heavily to control the lice, more fish were dying in appalling conditions and the pollution caused by their waste and the use of chemicals was becoming more serious. He has spent the past five years labelled an “eco-terrorist”, a “troublemaker”, an “exaggerator” and “a prophet of doom”. He has been sued by the industry for defamation, lost a high-profile Canadian high court battle, been heavily fined, been threatened many times, and been ordered never to repeat statements such as “wild salmon don’t do drugs” and “salmon farming spreads diseases”.

“He is an ace troublemaker. He annoys everyone … but he uses freedom of information requests to get his data and 99 times out of 100 he is right”, says Scottish investigative journalist Rob Edwards. “I am a trained scientist. I use peer-reviewed science and use the industry’s own figures,” says Staniford.

“What we are seeing now is a chemical arms race in the seas, just like on the land farms, where the resistance of plants to chemicals is growing. In fish farms, the parasites are increasing resistance to chemicals and antibiotics. There has been a 10-fold increase in the use of some chemicals in the past 18 months.” The farms are now turning to mechanical ways to delouse the fish, he says. “They are using hydro-dousers, like huge carwashes, and thermal lousing, which heats them up.” There is also the spectre of GM salmon, with companies engineering GM plants for their omega-3 to feed the fish, and a US company given permission to develop GM salmon.

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...he-environment