The tipping point has been reached.
Reading this report from yesterday quantifies everything that is wrong with our approach to food.
You see, Salmon, used to be a seasonal food.
Much like other seasonal foods, it was enjoyed as a celebration of a particular time of year.
I remember this time as a child.
The salmon would return to Ireland to spawn…swimming furiously up the rivers to lay their eggs in dark, sometimes shallow, pools of freshwater, having survived a momentous journey across the Atlantic Ocean and into the fast, freshwater rivers of the west of Ireland.
It was easy enough to catch them, though not always legal, but then people rarely took more than they could eat or share.
We had no fridge in our tiny house and no freezer.
Barely standing room for parents and eleven children!
The salmon was a great supplement to a frugal diet and the men seemed to understand the value of the sacred fish, for they were regarded as such in the old ways.
The Salmon of Wisdom.
The Salmon of Knowledge.
There was a sense of compassion by the banks of the River Strule in Omagh.
An empathy even with this most magical of all fish… Fish Farms put an end to all this, injecting a venom of disconnect into the veins of human beings.
Greed over-ruled millennia of links between human and salmon.
This is what I have just read from yesterday’s paper…
The number of salmon killed by diseases at Scottish fish farms rose to more than 8.5 million last year.
New figures released by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) reveal losses from all salmon farms have reached nearly 10% of production.
The main problem has been the spread of amoebic gill disease, blamed by some on the warmer seas caused by climate pollution.
In 2012, 13,627 tonnes of dead fish had to be disposed of by 230 fish farms along the west coast and on the islands, compared with 9717 tonnes in 2011 and 7159 tonnes in 2010.
This has raised questions about how such large amounts of diseased waste are safely disposed of, and how the process is regulated. Sepa and local authorities both say it is not their responsibility.
Anglers and environmentalists pin the blame on production methods and are demanding a halt to any expansion plans.
“It is clear from these massive mortality figures there are major problems,” said Hugh Campbell Adamson, the chairman of the Salmon and Trout Association in Scotland. “When a large number of fish are closely confined, the likelihood of endemic disease is greatly increased.”
Fish farmer Grieg Seafood declined to comment.
HeraldScotland
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/disease-deaths-on-salmon-farms-soar.20177714
