The wave of Ocean Industrialization is building – NOAA IS BENT ON AQUACULTURE: or With friends like this….
The wave of Ocean Industrialization is building. Wind mill farms that grow nothing, Open Ocean Aquaculture, Tidal Generation (which makes sense), and Ocean Mining. It appears to some, that plunking all kinds of junk in the ocean will solve all of man kinds problems! We’ve posted quite a few articles about Ocean Industrialization lately. Featured writer Dick Grachek reminds us about NOAA’s Ocean Aquaculture philosophy. We should all be very concerned.
NOAA IS BENT ON AQUACULTURE: or With friends like this….“NOAA backs aquaculture”, SAMUEL D Rauch III, NOAA’s Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regulatory Programs, has released a statement stressing the importance of the aquaculture industry to both the US economy and the environment. Speaking on 21 August, [2012] he observed that: Read more here
Following are excerpts from an article I’ve just written about the FDA’s likely approval of GE salmon, NOAA’s promotion of industrial aquaculture, and why the assault on independent fisheries is a way of getting to resources otherwise unobtainable. Washington is targeted by NOAA for aquaculture of blackcod, halibut, doubling the nonnative salmon production and extensive shellfish farming. Several large shellfish companies rear geoduck clams, stomping thousands of plastic tubes into each acre of tidelands or smothering them with nonnative oysters in heavy bags. Bulldozing beaches wipes out the marine vegetation and forage fish spawning beds which affects salmon, Orca whales, birds, other marine life.
The revolving door is swinging widely between agencies making huge policy changes and the industries that will benefit. The grand plan, in my mind, is the destruction of the common food resource, or the economy based on healthy common food resources, and then the opposition to dirty extractive industries is eliminated (I fished Copper River for 6 years and Bristol Bay for 22 so Pebble Mine, offshore oil drilling/natural gas extraction, coal trains severing our waterfronts are
some of the battlefronts in our part of the coastline).
Some excerpts from an article… and then I’m back to lining up fishing folks to testify at our hearing on labeling of GE foods/fish.
If the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves AquaBounty Technologies’ GE Salmon, it will be the first food from a transgenic animal experiment to enter the U.S. food supply, possibly as early as 2014…. The FDA is reviewing it as an animal drug, not as a human food…. Instead of conducting independent safety studies, the FDA has relied on data from AquaBounty Technologies, the transnational corporation that created AquAdvantage salmon to market to growers worldwide. Most FDA employees overseeing GE experimentations are veterinarians. While knowledgeable about large animals, they have been criticized for not inviting appraisal by experts in human health and other relevant fields.
One of the most troubling aspects of creating new life forms in laboratories is that public safety evaluations are conducted in secret. The process itself is flawed because important information is treated as proprietary, and the public, scientists, and other relevant agencies are largely excluded from providing input and oversight.
Nevertheless, the docket for new products is stacking up. Along with “frankensalmon,” dozens of other experimental GE fish, including trout, catfish, tilapia, striped bass, and flounder may also move from laboratories to commercial feedlot production…….Another important concern regarding the production of biotech animals is that they will pollute the gene pool of wild and domestic animals. This is especially worrisome if GE fish are reared in open cages that have proven incapable of confining fish. Use of open cages replicates some of the worst practices of factory farming on land in the marine environment, with impacts on water quality, wild fish populations, coastal economies and family fishing businesses.
Although GE salmon are currently reared outside the US, in facilities in Canada and Panama, control over future production is impossible. The expansion of offshore industrial aquaculture, promoted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, would allow fish farms as close as three miles to our nation’s shorelines.
Wild fish populations have plummeted due to dams, diverted rivers, waste spillage, and development on the water’s edge. While consumers who value wild fish have allowed communities to resist pressure to sell out to dirty industries with attractive short-term business plans and hidden long-term environmental impacts, that could change if markets are flooded with faster-growing farmed GE fish, heavily subsidized by nature and promoted by agencies working too closely with industries they should be regulating. …..Today, more than 60 other countries already ban genetically engineered foods or require that they are labeled. ….More than 40 members of the U.S. Congress questioned the lack of safeguards and urged the FDA to address serious flaws in its approval process and incorporate more public input and scientific data. In a letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, they argued that GE fish would put wild fish in jeopardy and “recklessly and needlessly endanger human health”.
Federal legislation has been introduced that would ban production, sales or shipping of genetically engineered salmon in the US, and more sponsors are needed. While technical critiques are being submitted by scientists, conservationists, natural food retailers, fishing organizations, and others, the FDA and elected officials also need to hear from consumers who care about what they eat….
Readers who agree that deeper precautions are needed to staunch the potential perils of GE salmon are urged to send comments to the FDA before the April 26th deadline and to lobby their representatives in both Congress and the Senate. ….. (to submit comments, google “FDA genetically engineered salmon ” or go to “ge-fish.org” for more info)
Thankyou Anne, If the mega-businesses that are pushing this GMO debacle can alter the fish thriough genetic “engineering” they can then patent them and then they can own them and license them. Then they can get richer and richer and to hell with the consequences for everone else. This is profit motive run rampant. Keep calling them out! Please.