With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1501233
ON THE RADAR ( the informer ) T he fish farming industry is fighting for its life on British Columbia's coast. For the second time in as many years, three of the biggest players in the salmon aquaculture sector have turned to the courts to challenge a decision by Fisheries and Oceans Canada ( DFO) to shutter 15 fish farms in the Discovery Islands due to concerns about the impact of sea lice and other pathogens on wild salmon migrating through the archi- pelago between Campbell River and the mainland coast. Four years ago, Prime Minis- ter Justin Trudeau promised to get open net-pen fish farms out of B.C.'s coastal waters by 2025. Open net pens are essentially floating fishnets attached to rafts that are anchored to the sea floor. Though farmed fish do occasionally escape, for the most part they are contained in the nets. However, fish waste, disease and sea lice aren't, and can pass into the surrounding Salmon Says B.C.'s fish farming industry is in murky waters thanks to government regulations By Andrew Findlay NAT U R A L R E S O U R C E S FARM ALARM B.C. exported a record $5.11 billion (5.7% increase) in agriculture, seafood and processed food and beverage products to 151 different international markets in 2021 (the most recent year the data is available). B.C.'S TOP FIVE EXPORT MARKETS WERE U.S. ($3.9 BILLION) CHINA ($344 MILLION) JAPAN ($218 MILLION) SOUTH KOREA ($135 MILLION) HONG KONG ($84 MILLION) THE TOP FIVE EXPORT COMMODITIES 1 Farmed Atlantic salmon ($519 million) 2 Food preparations for manufacturing and natural health products ($475 million) 3 Baked goods ($338 million) 4 Tallow ($283 million) 5 Mushrooms ($272 million) Of the top ten international export markets, the following three had the largest growth from 2020 to 2021 SOURCE: MINISTRY OF AGRICULTURE AND FOOD – SECTOR INSIGHTS AND CORPORATE INITIATIVES UNIT, DECEMBER 2022 REPORT TAVISH CAMPBELL DON'T THINK LICE The DFO conducted an internal report on fish farm- ing and sea lice—but some scientists are calling it fishy JULY/AUGUST 2023 BCBUSINESS.CA 17 marine environment and infect wild fish. In a letter dated December 13, 2019, Trudeau told then-DFO minister Bernadette Jordan to "work with the province of Brit- ish Columbia and Indigenous communities on a responsible plan to transition from open net-pen salmon farming in coastal British Columbia waters by 2025." A year later, following up on Trudeau's directive, Jordan put companies on notice, say- ing that all Discovery Island fish farms would be closed by June 2022. Last spring, how- ever, three B.C.-based salmon farming companies—Mowi Canada West, Cermaq Canada and Grieg Seafood—asked the courts for a judicial review. The companies argued that they PHILIPPINES 44.5% JAPAN 17% UKRAINE 16.7%