Poultry Farms and Aquaculture- More in Common Than We Thought

This week in Florence, Italy, many of the world‚ most powerful aquaculture advocates have gathered to discuss the state of the industry. FWW’s Executive Director, Wenonah Hauter is there and sends us this report:‚Here in Florence the contradictions between traditional, low-impact food production methods and the aspirations of the global aquaculture industry are glaring.

Today‚ conference started out with a presentation by an expert from the poultry industry on the parallels between industrial poultry production and fish farming.

Im sure the conference planners never dreamed that avian flu would crop up in a meeting about aquaculture and create all sorts of questions about factory farming. One Dr. Flock (no kidding) did happen to mention that the poultry industry has become so concentrated that avian flu is a real concern.

And if I only had a dollar for every reference to ‚sustainability.” There is a lot of “1984″ type talk at this conference. One of the keynote speakers gave a talk on ‚nutrient loading” from caged fish , otherwise known as biological pollution from fish farms. His recommendation for coping with this pollution was dilution. Yikes. Sounds like the same old story.

We also listened to a representative from NOAA brag about how good a job they are doing lobbying for S. ll95. Nice to see our tax money is at work.”

Thanks for the update Wenonah. We look forward to hearing more.