Sunday, March 9, 2008

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

No wait, this has always been ridiculous.

This morning CBC news reported that the BC Government wants to use more of the chemical SLICE to protect the spring run of wild salmon from sea lice. What is SLICE, you ask? It is a drug that is supposed to prevent farmed fish from getting sea lice. Since it is widely acknowledged (by all except our government, until, apparently, today) that farmed fish are hotbeds for sea lice and that wild salmon migrating past these farms easily fall prey to the lice which jump from farmed to wild fish and consume their flesh, the government claims that this will help save the wild run.


This idea that pumping more chemicals into farmed fish (and thus the oceans) is not the answer. Because that's just what we need, Mr. Campbell, more antibiotics, carcinogenic dyes, and now SLICE, which is apparently a crustacean neurotoxin, in our food and environment.

No, what we really need is not only an opposition with the backbone to fight the government on this issue, but a media that isn't so bought that I'd be able to find the story online, from a major media outlet, when it breaks on the radio. By the way, where is the Green party? I never seem to hear anything about this from them.

Those things aside, at the very least we must have closed containment facilities immediately. If we continue to go down this path, there will be no wild salmon left.

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