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Submitter: Dennis Reid
Community: Victoria
Date Submitted: August 18, 2011
Summary:
Releasing disease data from fish farms will not financially affect the companies as they claim, as their share prices are already dropping.
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Submission:
Financial Damage to Norwegian Derivative Fish Farms as a Result of Disease Reporting in BC.
I suggest having someone in your shop do the research to assess whether releasing disease data will financially affect fish farms, the argument they have made to have the data being held confidential.
You will find that they are already in trouble and thus this has nothing to do with releasing disease data.
You can get the share price for Mainstream Canada (Cermaq), Marine Harvest and Grieg Seafoods on many sites, particularly the Oslo stock exchange where their stocks are traded. In addition they release quarterly reports to their financial data that is easily accessible and intended for public review.
Marine Harvest - its shares have been in freefall for the last two years, plummeting to the almost deadly range of 49 cents last Friday. The damage was largely caused by their disastrous ISA problems in Chile, and more recently by cold water in Norway. They lost 1.4 billion Euros in Chile.
Mainstream Canada shares - Cermaq owns Mainstream and Cermaq is owned by the Norwegian government and its 43.5% share - have declined in the last three months 54.5% to $10.20. There is also the issue here that as owned by the Norwegian government there is no one person whose reputation can be tarnished. Cermaq/Mainstream lost $323 million in Chile.
Greig Seafoods - its shares have fallen 50% to $1.70 in the past three months.
These dramatic declines have nothing to do with their releasing disease data here because it has not been released yet. My sense of it is that the problem is that retailers and consumers will not buy their environmentally damaging products anymore. And I have a list of 24 mostly on-land, closed fish farm systems. The rest of the farmed fish companies have or are moving to operations only on land. The Norwegian derivative fish farms are becoming techno- logical dinosaurs and are being increasingly isolated from the rest of the industry, retailers and consumers in the western world.
And, in any event, no company can get data withheld from a commission. That's silly.
In addition Cermaq's CEO, recently, left the government owned corporation to head up the Norwegian government's train transportation Ministry.
Furthermore, Cermaq will probably argue that it has just signed an agreement in Norway with environmentalist organizations and that it will do good things in Canada. Friends of the Earth Norway and ForUM are the organizations. You should have someone check them out. You will find that one is a think tank, not an environmentalist org as claimed. I have asked for their financial reports, but they have not responded. It is fair to find out who gives them money, for example, the Norwegian derivative fish farms or the government itself.
And, of course, no environmental agreement in one country has any force in another country. Hence do not buy the argument. They are using BC's pristine wilderness as an open sewer, and that is their main reason for being in the ocean.
I have read substantially on fish farm news and science in the past five years and write on it for publication.
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