From The Financial Post: The Case Of The Missing Sea Lice
What's behind the fish farm fuss? Is it science? Is it Alaskan salmon marketing? Is it a bit of both? These are some of the questions that Ezra Levant began to ask me on his show today. In response, I began by trying to explain that "wild vs. farmed" is a bit of a false choice, a false dichotomy.
In North America, more than 90 percent of so-called "wild" salmon is Alaskan. In fact, about half of so-called "wild" Alaskan salmon are actually born in a bucket, hatched in a plastic tray, fed pellets, grown in tanks and raised in net pens as are farmed salmon. These Alaskan salmon are not "wild." These Alaskan salmon are ranched. In 2010, ranched salmon accounted for nearly half of the so-called "wild" Alaskan salmon harvest.
Ezra and I began to scratch the surface about the elephant in the room, that is, the marketing perspective, and how the publicity of so-called "science" appears to me to have been used as a marketing tactic to sway consumers away from farmed salmon and towards the alternative product, so-called "wild" salmon, most of which is Alaskan. As we now know from U.S. tax returns, in fact, shifting consumer and retailer demand is precisely what environmental organizations have been paid to do.
Ezra mentions that the David Suzuki Foundation has been paid more than $1 million by USA foundations. Actually, that figure is more than $10 million.
In today's interview, I mentioned that the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation has granted $64 million to environmental groups in B.C. and that the Hewlett Foundation and the Packard foundation (two separate foundations), have granted more than $70 million ($42 million from Hewlett and $32 million from Packard).
Here's the kicker.... and yet this is what I did not find a way to mention on today's show. When a highly controversial study of contaminants in farmed salmon and another highly controversial study of sea lice were published in the prestigious journal SCIENCE, the editor in chief, Dr. Donald Kennedy, was a trustee of the Packard foundation. The current editor-in-chief, Dr. Bruce Alberts, is a trustee of the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation.
Below, here's the grant for an "antifarming campaign" involving "science messages" and "earned media." By the way, shortly after I raised concern about this grant for $560,000 from the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, this grant and three other grants for $3.6 million were quietly re-written by the Moore Foundation.
Further information:
- For my open letters to David Suzuki over the past four years, please click here.
- For my appeal to David Suzuki of May 31, 2011, please click here.
- For more about the $10 million that the David Suzuki Foundation has been paid by American funders, please click here.
- For more about the American funders of the project that produced the David Suzuki Foundation's brochure titled, "Why You Shouldn't Eat Farmed Salmon, please click here.
- For the Packard foundation's strategy paper for "Market Intervention" click here. See also my article about this in The Financial Post, in January: Packard's Push Against B.C. Salmon.
- For the 46 page document which I outlined my concerns about press releases & web-pages from the David Suzuki Foundation, please click here.
- For how the David Suzuki Foundation quietly removed 16 press releases & web-pages about farmed salmon and salmon farming on Feb. 3 & 4, 2010, please click here. For the complete list of 23 press releases & web-pages that have been quietly removed, please click here.
- For a look back at my meeting in February 2010, with the CEO of the David Suzuki Foundation, Mr. Peter Robinson, please click here.
- For my first TV interview on the Ezra Levant Show, please click here.
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