New Deadlines
The Cohen Commission will now begin its evidentiary hearings October 25th, a month later than originally planned. Due to the sheer volume of evidence submitted by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the Commission had to request an exstension. Their interim report is now due by October 29th.
The Commissioner will also be conducting site visits that will provide him context and information regarding various aspects of the Fraser River sockeye salmon fishery. More information for media about the site visits will be available from the commission soon.
The Canada General Standards Board has recently released a draft of the standards for organic aquaculture.
Current net pen practices are in no way organic and draft organic aquaculture standards that suggest this is the case need serious revision, says the Green Party of Canada.
The draft standards released last week by a committee of the Canada General Standards Board do not propose the necessary changes and improvements needed for aquaculture practices to become environmentally friendly.
To read the draft of the standards, and to submit comments:
http://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/cgsb/prgsrv/stdsdev/nsa/pubrevdoc/pubrevdoc-e.html
As of December 2010, salmon feedlots in BC will be entirely under DFO's jurisdiction (with the exception of foreshore lease applications). The new Pacific Aquaculture Regulations DFO are proposing have just been posted to the
Canadian Gazette website for a 60-day public review period.
Unfortunately, each licence under this new regime will vary site to site and the diseases they have to report and the amount of wild fish they can catch in their pens will vary. This is disturbing. We hope may of you will take the opportunity to comment that salmon feedlots in the ocean need to
report all their disease outbreaks and that this information be accessible to the public.
The contact for comments to the regulations is Ed Porter,
PAR-RPA@dfo-mpo.gc.ca.
