GMO's, DFO's and EXPLODING WATERMELONS

 BC policy makers seem as entranced with hormones that make food grow fast and fat as the Chinese farmers are whose watermelons have recently exploded from over enthusiastic applications.  Especially the BC Liberal Government is entranced with the use of hormones in the fish farm industry.

 Our provincial government, along with all three of our universities and in close cooperation with our Department of Fisheries and Oceans, are in the process of totally changing the hormonal composition of our salmon.  From the sex changing of males into females for fish farm pens to stocking our lakes and coastal waters with these hormonally disturbed fish without telling the public, has actually become the norm.  The hormonally changed fish also go through a process (artificial female triploidy) that makes them sterile.  Usually.   By never going through sexual maturation the salmon grow bigger and fatter.  But some few will remain able to mate with wild fish in our waterways, thus creating a veritable nightmare of increasing numbers of fish in the wild with screwed up hormonal compositions.

  Much of this sex hormone manipulation of BC salmon emanates from the work of Dr. Edward M. Donaldson, DFO, Professor Emeritus, and UVIC adjutant professor. So what, you might ask?  Doesn’t Dr. Donaldson have a right to do this?  No.  Not in secret, and not on our dime.  Dr. Donaldson should have been drawing his salary from the fish farms instead of from us.  And who are our publically funded universities serving?   The public?  Or private corporations like AquaBounty?   

AquaBounty (started at Memorial and Queens Universities) has patented a salmon that is no longer even a salmon.  The FrankenFish is part eel (eel genes have been sliced into the genetic structure of the fish) and grows up to four times the size of an ordinary salmon in less than half the time.  Did our BC universities know about this monster creation beforehand or was it a privately held secret by Memorial and Queens Universities back east?

  Of course our BC universities knew all about Frankenfish.   Because they’re already here and are being grown in BC.  Dr. Donaldson tells us in his REPRODUCTIVE CONTAINMENT OF GENETICALLY ALTERED SALMONIDS on page 114 “ Total containment has recently been implemented for the field testing of transgenic carp (FrankenFish) in the US… along  with Atlantic Salmon (still talking about transgenic fish, the ones that have been dubbed Frankenfish) imported into British Columbia…”

 And how does Dr. Donaldson suggest these FrankenFish salmon be held and grown in BC?  First, Dr. Donaldson says they must be held in a land based system “with a 24 hour security system, triple screening of out flows, treatment of the effluent, surround of field trial ponds with dry ponds, and provision for removal or poisoning of fish in the event that a flood is predicted. “ 

This is obviously serious stuff.  Almost like containing terrorists.  Patented terrorists. So, as these FrankenFish are already here, where are the land based containment facilities capable of complete security where the FrankenFish can be grown in absolute secrecy?  After all, how many exclusively land based, totally contained fish farms are there in BC?

Continued…