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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— June – July 2013
T
HE recent discovery of the chemical
Teflubenzuron at hundreds of times
the legal limit in the environment of a
Marine Harvest salmon farm in Scotland
highlights the dangers of releasing chemicals
uncontrolled into our waters. The old attitude
of ‘dilute and disperse’ has in fact despoiled our
environment, both in the air and in the seas.
Teflubenzuron is one of the chemicals used
to control sea lice. These can harm and even
kill farmed salmon. Resistance to chemicals
builds and sea lice are regularly recorded at lev-
els where existing protocols require mandatory
treatment.
In the wild, salmon return to fresh water to
spawn and the lice fall off. Captive in our bays, in
fish-farm-factories, conditions favour the con-
gregations of sea lice. If there are a million fish on
the farm with just one egg-bearing louse each, the
farm may release m lice larvae. Even infesta-
tions at levels below which they affect the caged
fish can infect wild salmon at distances of up to
kilometres.
Here in Ireland, Marine Harvest, the
Norwegian-owned company that produces
% of Irish farmed salmon, has stated that
it “never used this medicine [Teflubenzuron] in
our organic fish anywhere in Ireland, including
Bantry Bay”. Though we must give it the benefit
of the doubt, this cannot be independently veri-
fied – as information about the type, frequency of
treatment, and volumes of chemicals used in any
Irish salmon farm is not publicly available. The
Regulatory Agency does not ‘hold’ this informa-
tion and the companies refuse it on grounds of
commercial confidentiality: “every stage of our
production process is audited annually by inde-
pendent bodies”.
We do, however, have Marine Harvest’s
EIS (Environmental Impact Statement) for the
.ha Bantry Bay proposed €.m expansion.
In volume of it lists Teflubenzuron on the
‘Marine Harvest Medicines Positive List‘ to treat
sea lice.
Although the Marine Harvest statement
makes the point that Teflubenzuron is not used
on ‘organic’ farms, it does approve other chemi-
cals for use on organic farms on what it calls the
‘Medicine Positive List’ in the EIS. These include
Excis (cypermethrin) and AlphaMax (deltame-
thrin). Referred to in the EIS as ‘medicines’ or
‘chemotheruputants’, these chemicals are in fact
‘biocides’.
Medicines are a ‘drug or other prepara-
tion for the treatment or prevention of disease’.
Theraputants aim at the ‘remedial treatment of
disease’. Biocide is a word that stems from bio
(for ‘life’) and cides (for ‘killing)’.
The chemicals on Marine Harvest’s ‘Medicine
Positive’ list come under the EU’s Biocides
Directive as product type – insecticides
- but they do not appear on the Registry of Irish
Biocides, as maintained by the Department of
Agriculture. If the product was classed as a bio-
cide rather than a medicine in Ireland, its use
would not legally be permitted unless it could
be ‘scientifically demonstrated that under rel-
evant field conditions there is no unacceptable
effect’.
These chemicals kill life; medicine saves lives.
These chemicals are extremely ecotoxic active
neurotoxins. Arthropods, and particularly crus-
taceans, are highly susceptible. There are known
effects on fish and, most sensitive of all, shellfish
such as lobsters. Bathers may also be at risk. For
this reason, the manufacturers of both products
clearly indicate that there should be no release
to the environment and the Irish Medicines
Board Information sheets for these chemicals
state: “Do not contaminate natural water with
the product”
According to the Galway Bay EIS prepared by
the applicant for its -ha site, the Government
agency, Bord Iascaigh Mhara, ‘The volume of
chemical used to treat a single pen of salmon
[ pens are proposed] is estimated at ,
cubic metres’. For comparison, an Olympic swim-
ming pool holds , cubic metres. This will
be discharged directly into the (once) natural
waters of our Bays in spite of the fact that the
manufacturers do not support direct release of
these neurotoxins.
And all this gets organic certification.
tony lowes
environment
Organic Greenwash
Pesticides from salmon
farms are extremely
ecotoxic to crustaceans,
fish and humans
Pesticides kill lice
In the UK, horses can
only be treated with
cypermethrin if a veterinary
certicate is supplied
saying that the horse will
not be killed for human
consumption
“
