South Coast Today - glenn cooke

More troubles for Cooke Aqua: Product recall, "Do not buy" notice for farmed salmon, loan demands

Timothy Gillespie — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 12:06:57 +0000

COOKE CEO GLENN COOKE

Fish farming practices harm environment

New Brunswick-based multi-national farmed salmon producer Cooke Aquaculture had nothing but bad news during the past month, including yet another product recall from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), a voluable complaint from the mayor of the town housing Cooke's Nova Scotia headquarters and a notice to consumers to avoid eating Cooke's primary product, Atlantic salmon grown in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland.

Government product recalls
In late January, CFIA issues a recall notice for salmon products produced by subsidiary True North Salmon, based on evidence that the fish might contain particles of a foreign substance. In 2012, CFIA issues a recall warning when Cooke distributed framed mussels which were alleged to contain marine biotoxins. Also in 2012, three Cooke executives - including CEO and founder Glenn Cooke - faced federal felony charges for dumping gallons of deadly insecticides near their salmon cages in the Bay of Fundy.

Avoid this salmon
The most recent issue of the Seafood Watch consumer guide cited farmed Atlantic salmon grown by Cooke and others in "feedlot" conditions in open net pen cages as food to avoid. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program creates science-based recommendations that help consumers and businesses make ocean-friendly seafood choices. More than 1,000 businesses across North America use Seafood Watch's science to inform their purchasing decisions, the organization says.

The Seafood Watch report breaks down its seafood rankings into three categories: best choice, good alternative and avoid.

The "red" label - or "avoid" - from Seafood Watch means it recommends consumers shouldn't buy a product because it's caught or farmed in ways that harm other marine life or the environment. Susanna Fuller, marine coordinator for Halifax-based Ecology Action Centre, said Atlantic Canadian fish farms use far too many chemicals and antibiotics on their fish and there's a risk that farmed fish will escape and pass diseases to wild salmon. Cooke Aquaculture owns and operates the majority of salmon farms in the Atlantic Region and has feedlot farms in Maine, Chile and Scotland.

Cooke salmon farms in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Chile have had many instances of sea lice epidemics and virulent outbreaks of infectious salmon anemia (ISA), resulting in the enforced slaughter of millions of market-ready salmon.

Show us the money
This week, Cooke was also in the news throughout Nova Scotia and in international fish business journals as a result of the mayor and Council in Shelburne, Nova Scotia, pushing the province to spend millions originally intended to fund Cooke Aquaculture's new processing plant for economic development. The headquarters for Cooke operations in Nova Scotia are in Shelburne. Nova Scotia The minister of Business for the province said recently, that the province would be calling in an $18 million loan to Cooke due to the firm's failure to perform its obligations under the loan agreement.

The province had committed to making $25 million available to the company to build the plant that would have employed more than 300 people, but the company said in January that it was abandoning those plans. The council said it wanted to see some of that money stay in Shelburne to create more jobs.

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Cooke Aqua sees continued disease in Chile operations

Timothy Gillespie — Fri, 14 Aug 2015 18:33:21 +0000

COOKE AQUACULTURE HARVESTS SALMON FROM THIER CHILE OPERATIONS

Chile's National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service (Sernapesca) has detected a new infectious salmon anemia (ISA) case at Cooke Aquaculture's Chilean operations.

The affected farm, Ballena 1, belongs to Cooke's subsidiary Salmones Cupquelan, which had reported another ISA case in late February, as well as outbreaks in 2013 and 2014.

Sernapesca detected the HPR 3 variant of the virus at the center located in the Aysen region last week.

Other centers in the region are not suspected of the virus presence, Sernapesca said.

Sernapesca has ordered inclreased official surveillance on the center Ballena 1, as well as on other farms from the area and has restricted movements in the area as a preventive measure.

Cooke has had several ISA outbreaks at a variety of their Chilean farms since purchasing them in the wake of the massive salmon kill-off in 2008, which virtually destroyed the farmed salmon industry in that country.

Cooke has also been forced to slaughter millions of salmon at their open pen industrial farms in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland, some of which have been reported to have entered the consumer food chain..

EUROPEAN UNION CONCERNED

The EU regulators expressed concern in 2013 about the serial outbreaks of ISA and sea lice in Chilean farms, sending a team of inspectors to the country to verify Chilean claims that ISA control measures were in place. Chile exports of farmed salmon in 2013 amounted to 205,000 tonnes, with a value of $2.2 US billion. Exports to the EU and Russia figured prominently in those values. In 2013, Russia imported 63 700 tonnes of salmon and trout from Chile, a rise of 127% from the previous year.

But when several years later, in 2013, new outbreaks were produced in the Aysen region, major steps were noted to control the situation. The audit highlighted the comprehensive analysis performed by SERNAPESCA in the development of official investigations against suspected diseases.

ISA SALMON PROCESSED FOR SALE?
Cooke harvested hundreds of thousands of 5.5 kilo salmon from the site in the 2014 episode, with 600,000 fish, amounting to 30,000 tonnes of commercial product.

There is no record of how many of the ISA-infected salmon have been processed and distributed to consumer markets in the USA and Europe.

OTHER STORIES ABOUT THE PREVALENCE CHILEAN SALMON DISEASE ISSUES

Cooke Aqua expanding into wild fishery

Timothy Gillespie — Fri, 05 Jun 2015 17:56:23 +0000

New company formed

Undercurrent news has reported that Cooke Aquaculture CEO Glenn Cooke and family members have signed an agreement to purchase Wanchese Fish Company based in Suffolk, Virginia US, after deal talks have taken place for one year.

This deal and investment into the wild fishery involves the creation of a new company, Cooke Seafood USA Inc., which "will provide another platform for future growth within the capture fishery."

The Wanchese Fish Company, founded in 1936, is a harvester, processor and distributor with the capacity to harvest 4,000 tons of wild scallops, flounder and other seafood products each year. It owns a fleet of 15 vessels capable of providing product fresh to the US, with process-at-sea capabilities, as well as a cold storage facility and processing plant in Suffolk, Virginia.

“This purchase is an exciting venture for us as we add a well-respected, family-owned and vertically integrated fishing company to our family’s businesses,” Glenn Cooke, CEO Of the newly formed company, said.

New Brunswick-based multi-national has been the dominant force in atlantic salmon feedlot aquaculture in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland. The firm also has operations in USA, Scotland, Chile and Spain.

Cooke Aquaculture has been featured in recent years in stories about massive disease-related slaughters in several of their feedlot fish pens, in sea lice epidemics in several locations, in massive fish kills due to "super chill" and about federal charges of illegal discharge of dangerous pesticides into Canadian waters. Glenn Cooke and other executives pleaded guilty in a New Brunswick court in 2014 to the federal charges, which resulted in the deaths of thousands of nearby lobsters.

Most recently, Cooke was subject to a rebuke from Nova Scotia premier Stephen NcNeil for renegging on an agreement to build a fish processing plant in Shelburne, Nova Scotia. The agreement was part of a $25 million loan package from the Nova Scotia government. McNeil said if Cooke could not keep its agreement build the plant in 2015, they should "give back the money", referring to $18 million advanced by the government.

Thursday, a prominent Halifax restaurant owner commented on the healthiness of Atlantic salmon grown by Cooke or others, saying "I wouldn't feed it to my dog."

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Proposed aquaculture regs could set back ocean protection by decades

Timothy Gillespie — Tue, 17 Feb 2015 14:57:49 +0000

COOKE AQUACULTURE CEO GLENN COOKE WAS CHARGED IN 2011 WITH ILLEGALLY DUMPING HUNDREDS OF LITRES OF THE PESTICIDE CYPERMETHRIN INTO COASTAL NEW BRUNSWICK WATERS

Environmental protection will be set back "decades"
Business leaders, commercial and recreational fishing associations, scientists, lawyers and environmentalists called on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to halt the implementation of the proposed Aquaculture Activities Regulations, fearing that the new rules will permit aquaculture firms to put thousands of litres of deadly pesticides into coastal waters surrounding salmon farms in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland.

The changes, says the group, will exempt the aquaculture industry from the Fisheries Act provisions that “prohibit the release of deleterious substances into water frequented by fish.” Despite broad based opposition since the beginning of the regulatory change process, which started in 2011, the government of Canada has moved ahead in implementing these changes.

As an example of the deadly nature of chemicals can be found in the 2011 felony charges against Cooke Aquaculture CEO Glenn Cooke and two other executives for illegally dumping the dealy cypermethrin pesticide into the waters surrounding Cooke Aquaculture industrial fish farms on coastal New Brunswick. In a plea deal part way through a 2013 trial, the trio pleaded guilty to the charges and were fined close to $500,000.

“These regulations will set back Canadian aquatic environmental protection measures several decades,” states Bill Ernst, a retired Environment Canada toxicologist. “They will eliminate Environment Canada’s role in enforcing the law with respect to aquaculture and hand responsibility over to Health Canada who do not have an undivided environmental protection mandate.”

The 120 signatories of an open letter sent today, contend that the proposed changes will lead to increased environmental risk through the discharge of increasingly powerful pesticides, and other potentially damaging substances into the aquatic ecosystem, significantly reduce government regulatory oversight, and damage Canada’s commercial interests as a provider of untainted seafood.

“We have been fishing along side the aquaculture industry for decades and we know the impacts open-pen salmon farms can have on the traditional fishery. When the salmon aquaculture industry is poorly regulated it places our industry and livelihoods in jeopardy. We have grave concerns about the contents of the Aquaculture Activities Regulations, particularly the emphasis on aquaculture industry self-monitoring and regulation, and the capacity of DFO to enforce the proposed regulations,” says Maria Recchia, Executive Director of Fundy North Fisherman’s Association based in Southwestern New Brunswick.

“The value of our industry is based on a pristine, non-polluted marine environment,” says Stewart Lamont, owner of Tangier Lobster in Nova Scotia. “We have already dealt with the impacts of pesticides, and see federal fines levied on something that would now become legal. To have DFO authorize pollution from a coastal industry is simply baffling.”

A newly released scientific study by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans on the impacts of two pesticides used to treat sea lice, Salmonsan and Alphamax, shows that there are lethal effects on lobster and the risk from one of those, Alphamax, exists up to ten kilometres from sites of use and concludes that there is a general lack of data on pesticide impacts on a wide variety of other marine species.

“We already know that our oceans and coastal ecosystems are suffering from far too much pollution. With these proposed regulatory changes, we are actively allowing further pollution of our coastal waters. Our coastal industries, particularly those that rely on a healthy marine environment will be put at risk,” says Dr. Susanna Fuller, Marine Conservation Coordinator at the Ecology Action Centre.” In addition, our international reputation on environmental protection will be impacted – something we can’t afford, particularly given the importance of the export markets to our fisheries.”

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