By JOHN DEVINE, Associate Editor, The Awakening quarterly, Ontario, Canada
Fish farms are one of the first factory farms in the development of farming techniques. We also have created factory farms for beef, poultry, pork, etc. to meet our food demand.
Webster’s Dictionary defines a farm as “an area of land used for cultivation or animal breeding under individual or collective management,” as well as “a tract of water for cultivating fish.” Most people likely don’t realize that a large share of fish farms in North America, specifically fish hatcheries, are owned and operated by governments, be they Provincial, State or Federal.
THE INTENT of these government factory farms is to assist in providing fish to the hunters of fish, be they commercial or recreational fishermen. Webster’s defines hunting like this: “To pursue (game) with the intention of capturing and killing.” Be it the shooting of a deer, or catching a fish with a hook and line, or netting fish with massive ocean trawlers, all these participants can be defined as hunters.
Attention has been brought to factory farms regarding their serious environmental impact (e.g. run-off of sewage from the factory farms, such as from beef farms, that leaks into aquifers). Yet fish farms are “under the radar” even as environmental concerns increase about factory farms in general.
WHAT’S UNKNOWN about fish hatcheries is their huge consumption of clean groundwater for raising just one pound of farmed fish, as well as the pollution caused from their discharge. Those involved in farming should ask our respective governments to confirm how many gallons of clean groundwater are needed to raise a pound of farmed fish, and the current average polluting per hatchery.
According to Ontario’s fish-culture section, each government-operated fish hatchery has a big impact, with a polluting factor of 20,000 people. This is troubling when you consider that there are over 500 government-operated fish hatcheries in North America. Moreover, we have yet to ascertain how many corporate and individually-owned fish hatcheries now operate in North America.
THE HEADS of the government fish farms, be they Governors or Premiers, could be given the title “CEO” of a public company, with the shareholders of these public companies being the taxpayers. Thus these particular CEOs would be the brethren to all other farmers in the greater farming community. That community should find out why their brethren, the government fish farmers, are not using the proven closed system (see AwakeningNews.ca) which recycles and cleans the hatchery water, thereby saving multi-billions of gallons of clean groundwater and dramatically reducing the pollution now flowing from the government’s old fl ow-through hatcheries.
EXPERTS BELIEVE the “huge” Ogallala Aquifer underneath eight U.S. states could run dry in 40 years. Let’s look NOW at the proven closed fish-hatchery system (intellectual property from Ontario’s University of Guelph), as the Ogallala is needlessly losing 60 million gallons a day to operate fish hatcheries, supply irrigation and meet other broad demands. What’s less obvious is that water helps form the basis of assets for farmers’ bank credit. So, we must ask the key question: “How low will the wells go, before the bankers say NO”?