There are moments in history and in the lives of people where threat creep towards them without cause for alarm, like the long sweep of a tsunami far out to sea and then suddenly makes landfall. History is full of them, human lives are ended by them. British Columbia, a nasty groundswell fundamental to your right to food security is approaching faster than a galloping horse to make landfall and history in the BC Parliament in the coming days. Please wake up.
In the coming few days, the Liberal government of BC intends to pass Bill 37, which makes sickness in farm animals a secret. When I read the BC farm salmon disease records released by Justice Cohen, my colleagues and I began testing for salmon influenza and heart viruses and found them. The federal and provincial governments and the salmon farming industry stubbornly, and without stated rational reason, refuse to even investigate these reports from top laboratories that these viruses are in farm salmon being sold in Vancouver and Victoria markets.
Provincial Minister of Agriculture, Don McRae, stood in the BC Parliament on the afternoon of March 27 to state that Asian and US legislators wanted to close their doors to BC farm salmon following positive tests for salmon flu virus. What were they told to reverse this decision?
I now have over 600 samples of farm salmon, wild salmon, Oolichans and steelhead in labs and if Minister McRae’s Bill 37 passes I won’t be able to tell you what is in those fish without facing punishment of 2 years in prison. First Nation friends liken the arrival of these European salmon and heart viruses to the small pox infested blankets given to them to control them. Officials with the government of Canada and the Province of BC called viral contamination via Atlantic salmon eggs “guaranteed,” but they were silenced by threat of international trade sanctions. And so the eggs poured in, the viruses came with them. All the players knew. And now those of us who have found these viruses will be silenced in the name of keeping open trade borders. Is the premise on which these borders remain open honest?
Wild salmon are the bloodstream of this coast. As this law no one can quite believe approaches we receive news of new viral epidemics in the industrial salmon weekly. Without people willing to ground-truth this industry by tracking their viruses, what do you think it going to happen to these reports?
Today a lawyer went into the BC Parliament, to witness landfall by this tsunami whose undertow will tear democracy and free speech from our very bodies. I want to look the men and women who would do this to us, to our children and to the earth, in the eye as they make sickness in our food secret.
Industrial salmon taking us where?
Alexandra Morton
Comments
5 responses to “Look Them in the EYE”
Where is the share botton
Governments (even when they succeed in passing legislation that may or may not be subject to court challenge) fall part well before their mandate ends.
Why?
For one they forget how to communicate with the public.
And two, they then cannot provide a logical explanation for a policy shift.
In B.C., we had the HST which was a model of how not to launch and communicate public policy initiatives.
Now we have Bill 37 which lacks, or so it seems to lack, any solid policy or evidentiary base.
It appears to otherwise moderate citizens as a particularly nasty, arbitrary and capricious piece of legislation.
B.C.’s trading and geographical partners (even if they have nothing to do with salmon), are unlikely to attach much trust and confidence in an administration that intends to destroy public trust and destroy a public right-to-know.
B.C. and not only the farmed and wild salmon industries, will be the net (sic) loser in this Bill 37 public policy disaster.
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Gee Alex , your little buddy Staniford is having quite a fit over a lousey 76 signatures on Annie Paddle’s petition. Tell me why is it you activists think you are the only ones that have a right to speak ? Why do you have a problem with a handful of signatures on a petition asking that you be restrained from violating bio security measures again ? Simply an honest request to prevent you from spreading IHN further. You claim to be a scientist now claiming to be a disease researcher in the Seattle Times. Then practice science and behave responsibly . I know you hate salmon farms as do your supporters but guess what ? It’s a democracy and others have rights too. Not everyone supports you and most of your endeavors are harmful economically to many other than just fish farmers.
Why do you feel Mainstream has put you in a dangerous place ? Because the employees are weary of your campaign against their industry ? By the way Hereditary Chief Harold Sewid has every right to speak about his territory the Broughton. You know the territory you claim to protect ? His people, my people by marriage have resided there for over ten thousand years. Who are you to claim to speak for them ?
Amanda:
The main irritant to many of us is not Mainstream’s quick quarantine reaction, but the total silence from the ranks of the provincial and federal regulators who, like true bureaucrats, have lowered a cone of silence.
I and many others think this is not in the public interest.
Mainstream are entitled to defend their private interests. But the civil servants are expected to defend or at least identify what is in the public interest.
Abandon that and you lose all sense of civil discourse.
Even citizens who have nothing to do with salmon farming are entitled to know how and where the IHVN investigation will proceed.
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