A national boycott of farmed smoked salmon for Christmas has been launched as part of the protest against the expansion of salmon farming along the Irish coast.

The Boycott campaign was agreed at a national meeting of groups and individuals opposing open net salmon farms in Bantry last month addressed by international anti fish farm campaigners and is supported by 10 different organisations including angling and environmental groups.

The campaign website provides stickers for supporters to use to spread the message. Supporters can download a template for standard labels address sheets which local printers and office suppliers have in stock. Using the provided art work on the template, single A4 colour printed sheets cost less then a euro and provide 18 stickers.

VISIT www.wildfish.ie      | PRESS RELEASE   |  Newsletter

// Read More //

FIE has written to the European Commission and to Irish Ministers demonstrating that the proposed Galway Bay mega fish farm is contrary to an agreement for a moratorium in salmon farm development reached under the National Development Plan 2007 – 2013 [NDP].

The Irish Seafood National Program 2007 – 2013 published under the National Development Plan in July 2010 acknowledges Central and Regional Fisheries Boards concerns which were supported by the Department of Communication, Energy and Natural Resources (DCENR) about the negative impact that sea lice emanating from salmon farms are having on migratory wild salmonids.

‘To address these concerns [the negative impact of sea lice], it has been decided that no financial assistance will be given to marine salmon aquaculture licence holders during the course of this National Programme until such time as the sea lice issue has been satisfactorily resolved.’

In spite of this, only just over a year later in December 2011 the Minister for Agriculture specifically provided an increase in the grant–in–aid for BIM ‘in view of the added responsibility which it will have in relation to the deep sea aquaculture’. The Minister has assigned BIM the task of obtaining the necessary licenses for the proposed ‘deep sea’ Galway Bay salmon farm that will double national production.

Read the Press Release   |  Read the letter

// Read More //

Background

At a meeting last Friday of concerned groups and citizens from around Ireland including anglers, environmentalists, and tourism interest concerned over the development of salmon farms in the bays along the Irish west coast, it was agreed that the idea of a boycott of farmed smoked salmon for this Christmas would be considered by the constituent groups.

The proposed campaign is short and time limited, targeted at the traditional Irish smoked salmon Christmas fare with the theme of ‘boycott farmed smoked salmon for Christmas and give the environment a gift’. Can you help?

// Read More //

FIE’s November Newsletter is out. It covers tomorrow’s fish farm meeting in Bantry, County Cork, where Don Staniford – fish farmers public enemy number 1 – will join Elena Edwards of the Canadian WILD SALMON FIRST! campaign and Dr. Roderick O’Sullivan, the author of the first study on salmon farming in Ireland for what promises to be an exciting evening. We hope to host a video of the presentation on our site afterwards.

The Newsletter also documents the successful outcome of FIE’s complaint to the EU over Ireland’s failure to conduct both a Strategic Environmental Assessment and an Appropriate Assessment for the massive agricultural expansion under Food Harvest 2020.

Also covered are FIE’s comprehensive documented complaint to the EU on Ireland’s failures in public access to information which will be featured this Friday at the UCC Enforcing European Environmental Law conference. Finally, it covers the latest FIE intervention on the toxic dump on Haulbowline Ireland, where while the dump is to be cleaned up but the heavily contaminated site of the steel plant itself is being ignored.

Read the Newsletter

// Read More //

International salmon activist Don Staniford is to speak at a public meeting in Bantry, County Cork on his current tour of Ireland.

Staniford, who has been described by aquaculture trade media as salmon farming’s “public enemy number one”, will be accompanied by Elena Edwards of the Canadian WILD SALMON FIRST! campaign and Dr. Roderick O’Sullivan, the author of the first study on salmon farming in Ireland in 1989.

In what is seen a major legal victory for anti–salmon farming activists, Staniford was last month cleared by the Canadian British Columbia Supreme Court of defamation for a series of shock ads.

Staniford says that ‘We need to speak for the salmon and stand tall against the Norwegian–owned corporations killing our wild fish, spreading infectious diseases and misinformation about the health of farmed salmon.’ For consumers, he says ‘the choice is clear: Quit eating farmed salmon or keep endangering the health of wild salmon and our global ocean.’ 

The meeting will be hosted by Save Bantry Bay in Bantry on Friday, 23 November 2012 at 7.30 PM in the Maritime hotel.

http://www.savebantrybay.com/ |  www.gaaia.org   |  www.wildsalmonfirst.org

// Read More //

 Conclusions ‘not supported by any scientific investigation

‘A submission by the Government agency Inland Fisheries Ireland will slam the proposed Galway Bay Fish Farm. The application for the 15,000 ton salmon farm – which would be the biggest in Europe – is being made by the semi–state agency who will then franchise the licensce to the highest bidder.

The ‘Submission by Inland Fisheries Ireland on the Environmental Impact Statement for a Deep Sea Fish Farm Development in Galway’ is available from the IFI website. It is highly critical of the Environmental Impact Statement [EIS].The submission alleges that the EIS contains many statements ‘not supported’ by research and that some relevant research is noticeably absent – such as data gathered  at the proposed site by the Celtic Voyager.

// Read More //

Residents on the Aran Islands found that the applicants for the proposed Galway Bay mega–salmon farm, Bord Iascaigh Mhara, failed to post to their website a damming report from a semi state agency, Inland Fisheries Ireland [IFI] ‘as directed by the Department of Agriculture Food and Marine to further assist in the public’s assessment of the Environmental Impact Statement’.

It is highly critical of the Environmental Impact Statement [EIS] demonstrating that the EIS contains many statements ‘not supported’ by research and that some relevant research is noticeably absent – such as data gathered on wild salmon at the proposed site by the Celtic Voyager – with two papers referred to actually coming to the ‘opposite conclusion’ of that reported in the EIA. The submission concludes that ‘A full monitoring system should be put in place and a baseline study undertaken in advance of any farm being established’.

Even though there were no legal time limits, BIM did not put the submission on their website with the other consultees because it was received on 3 October, 2012. The statutory consultation period closed on 2 October, 2012. Our original suggestion that BIM surprised the report was not accurate – they rejected it!

Read the IFI Submission | Read our latest Press Release | Read BIM’s outrage at FIE’s ‘slur’ | ‘War of Words’ media coverage | Galway Advertiser roundup

// Read More //

FIE’s ‘Complaint to the European Commission regarding bad transposition and bad application of Directive 2003/4/EC on public access to environmental information in Ireland’ draws together and provides specific detail on 16 individual complaints.

These include failures to transpose the EU Regulations in relation to ‘active dissemination’ of information as well as specific cases of failures to meet the requirements of the Regulations.

These include deeming cases ‘settled’ and making no ruling on the behaviour of the state authority; the failure to require reasons to be given in writing; lack of resources and staff shortages for the Commissioner for Information leading to delays of many years in some of our cases; the fees required; poor handling of many cases; the lack of consolidated legislation; the unavailability of many court judgements and indeed to the Information Regulations themselves, including the new costs rules for legal actions.

Specific complaints include the general failure of local authorities to maintain their registers of extractive industries and the high cost of the release of the 1973 aerial survey of Ireland to help defeat developers (particularly quarries) use of exemptions to the planning laws by fraudulently claiming pre 1963 establishments. [Photo: Dr. Aine Ryall, UCC Law Department]

Read the Submission

// Read More //

FIE has comprehensively rejected the Further Information supplied by the developer of the proposed 45 wind turbines near Doonbeg in County Clare, demonstrating that the developer’s submission shows a lack of understanding of bogs in suggesting that a rasied bog becomnes a blanket bog when cut and in failing to assess the impact on the important habitat with mitigation measures limited to areas of hardstanding.

FIE draws the Boards attention to two new issues for the first time in wind farm planning:

new research that shows that invasive species introduced during wind farm construction result in hybridisation that alters the gene pools of native populations

And

A combination of dissolved humic substances from bogs and natural UV–sunlight could increase phosphate levels in freshwaters.

The submission points out that we will continue to see biodiversity loss which we have agreed international to halt  if decision makers do not protect areas used by even low numbers of protected species and their priority habitats. Appellants are waiting to hear if an Oral Hearing will be granted by the Appeals Board.

Read the Further Information   |  Read the Original Appeal   | See how Doonbeg Golf Club has joined the opposition   | Visit the Rural Protection Group website

// Read More //

FIE has provided evidence to the European Commission that the latest amendments to the Irish law to ensure assessment of the many unregulated quarries through ‘substitute consent’ has failed.

A European Court Judgment in 2008 allowed retention of quarries without planning permission only when ‘exceptional circumstances’ are proved. Despite this, a special provision has now been made in Irish law for quarries to apply for ‘substitute consent’ without demonstrating exceptional circumstances.

Ireland is also in contempt of t its own laws in not assessing quarries under the Habitats Directive just because they were operating at the time the legislation came in 1997 – along with other loopholes that the submission cites with examples from across Ireland, including the Knockacoller Quarry in Co. Laois and the De Selby quarry in South Dublin.

Read the submission

// Read More //

At a public meeting to present Cork County Council’s plan to remediate the East Tip hazardous waste dump on Haulbowline Island, County Cork, FIE challenged the project Director Peter Young about the failure to address the larger adjacent site of the steel works itself. While the East Tip covers 9 hectares, a Report by Peter Young in 2002 detailed that the contamination extended across the 12 hectare steel plant site itself. Peter Young confirmed the danger in his affidavit for the Government’s unsuccessful court case seeking to recover remedial costs from the liquidator of the insolvent steel company. As the East Tip and the Steel plant are both on reclaimed ground, pollution will continue to flow unhindered between the two and into the environment unless the job is completed.

Read the detailed Press Release

// Read More //

On the day when a Private Members Bill is being debated in the Senate supporting the Irish Government’s opposition to changes to EU farming subsidies, FIE is calling on the public to ensure that the debate over the future of farming subsides is not left to the agricultural sector alone.

Ireland’s opposition to the reform of CAP payments demonstrates “regulatory capture” by the big agricultural interests at the expense of the social, economic, and environmental future of rural Ireland which will lose out if the changes are not brought in.

The public is not aware of the stark reality of the fact that they are paying for the entire structure of Irish Agriculture and they have a right to a voice in the debate about the future of farming. Without EU payments Irish agriculture would have made a loss of about €600 million in 2009.

Europe proposes to change the way it provides Irish farmers with subsidies from 2013 onwards by paying a flat rate approx €275 per hectare farmed by 2019.

This would be a salvation for the farmers on disadvantaged lands in rural Ireland – 70% of Ireland’s farm land.’  

Read also FIE on the Farmer’s March

// Read More //

FIE’s ‘Aquaculture News’ was published yesterday. The edition covers the story of the quashing of the Minister’s permission for mussel cultivation in Dunmanus Bay, West Cork [see below].

The decision establishes a precedent for the refusal of the proposed Bantry Bay salmon farm expansion as it cites the ‘poor flushing rate’ and the ‘large amount of organic and inorganic waste material’.

The Newsletter also covers the revelation that Appeals Board’s website shows no decisions or annual reports since 2006 with even the Members list out of date. FIE has written to the Minister [see below] and Frank McDonald, the Irish Times Environmental correspondent, has covered the story in today’s Irish Times.

The issue also covers the invitation to the ‘Bad Boys’ of fish farm activists, Don Staniford of the Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture and Kurt Oddekalv, the leader of the Green Warriors of Europe, to speak in Bantry next month. Staniford was recently cleared by the Quebec Supreme Court of defamation after sending a news release including four mock–cigarette packages, all modeled after the Marlboro brand, containing statements like, “Salmon Farming Kills”, “Salmon Farming is Poison”, “Salmon Farming is Toxic”, and “Salmon Farming Seriously Damages Health”.

Read the Newsletter – and sign up for the news as it happens

// Read More //

Simon Coveney, TD,

Minister for Agriculture, Marine, and Natural Resources,

Dublin

29 September, 2012

Dear Minister;

In the course of examining the Aquaculture Licensing Appeals Board decision of 25 September, 2012, to refuse permission for the cultivation of mussels in Dunmanus Bay, County Cork, we are greatly concerned to find that the Board has breached Article 7 of the Access to Information on the Environment legislation.

 Article 7: Dissemination of environmental information

1. Member States shall take the necessary measures to ensure that public authorities organise the environmental information which is relevant to their functions and which is held by or for them, with a view to its active and systematic dissemination to the public, in particular by means of computer telecommunication and/or electronic technology, where available. [Directive 2003/4/EC] 

// Read More //

The Aquaculture Licensing Appeals Board has quashed the decision by the Minister for the Marine, Simon Coveny, to grant permission for mussel lines in Dunmanus Bay. Friends of the Irish Environment, along with local residents, fishermen and marine associations had all appealed against the Minister’s December 2011 decision. 

Director Caroline Lewis said the quashing of the license supported its own organization’s arguments ‘word for word’. The ruling said that the development could “have a significant impact on other users including wild fisheries, natural habitat, and flora and fauna populations” while the “marine habitat could potentially be degraded”.

FIE said that the organization believed the decision, which cited the ‘poor flushing rate’ and the ‘large amount of organic and inorganic waste material’ meant that ‘the decision on the proposed Bantry Bay expansion of salmon farming by Marine Harvest must also now be refused on the same grounds as the flushing rate is even slower and the waste material exponentially greater’

FIE has also written to Simon Coveney, the marine minister, requesting that he provide information of the Aquaculture Licensing Appeals Board’s activities on their website where the Board’s website has not been updated for more than a year, the list of Board Members is out of date, decisions and inspectors Reports are not posted to the site, and the last determinations and annual report available are from 2006.

Read the Press Release

// Read More //

TESTIMONIALS: OIREACHTAS DEBATES

“Friends of the Irish Environment is a sinister organisation.” Frank Feighan, then Senator, (FG Roscommon)

“I would rename them the ‘enemies of the Irish people’ and proscribe both them and An Taisce.“ Diarmuid Wilson, Senator (FF, Cavan)

“The problem is that the Friends of the Irish Environment will never rest happy. People come and go in Brussels. They will continue going to Brussels, and this has been the problem from the beginning. I ask the Minister not to underestimate them. They have acosán dearg beaten to Brussels.” Éamon Ó Cuiv, TD, [FF, Galway West]

“The actions of the Friends of the Irish Environment group have been corrosive in this situation. When we went to Brussels, we were shown a file sent by this group stating that turf cutting should not continue. There was nothing in that file from Government or anyone else stating that turf cutting should continue. Who are the Friends of the Irish Environment? Whom does this group represent? It does not represent me or the people on the ground. The gloves must come off in terms of how we deal with bodies such as An Taisce and, in particular, Friends of the Irish Environment.” Frank Feighan, TD (FG Roscommon)

“I would welcome a wider debate on An Taisce and, as I have said previously, on an organisation called The Friends of the Irish Environment who have caused immense problems in planning in rural Ireland. In my constituency, they have pulled plans out of the county council to appeal them to An Bord Pleanála. Many local authority planners are scared witless by them because they just do not know what to do. If ever there was an organisation to be proscribed it should be The Friends of the Irish Environment because they have caused a great deal of trouble.” Frank Feighan, then Senator, (FG Roscommon)

And from MEP Marian Harkin: “Friends of the Irish Environment will be part of the problem, not part of the solution”.

// Read More //

FIE returned to Brussels to update the European Parliament’s Petitions Committee on the extensive cutting that continues in Ireland, both on protected sites and across the unprotected raised bogs of the midlands.  Ireland’s 2010 Report to the Convention of Biodiversity said there has been ‘a 99% loss of the original area of actively growing raised bog, and one–third of the remaining 1% has been lost in the last 10 years.’

Ireland responded that they have flown more than 70 overflights of protected areas and that prosecutions and deductions from farmer’s grants are planned. The Commission supported Ireland’s position.

Again, no response was made to the industrial extraction which continues without any legally required assessment, licences and planning permission, despite FIE’s successful application to the  High Court resulting in an order to the Planning Appeals Board to make a ruling on the matter two years ago.

While the Commission began proceedings in 1996 about the fact that no environmental assessment has ever been done in Ireland of vast industrial extraction, they dropped these proceedings in 2005 and the current proceedings are limited to the 55 protected bogs.

Read the Press Release   |   Watch the September 19, 2012 proceedings with the Irish Government and EU Commission response)  | Check out Marian Harkin, MEP fanning up embers in the rural media

// Read More //

The European Environment Commissioners for Agriculture and Environment have written jointly to Friends of the Irish Environment that they ‘fully share’ the group’s belief that Food Harvest 2020 would benefit from legal assessments under EU Directives.

Food Harvest 2020 proposes an increase in the primary output in the agriculture, fisheries and forestry sector of 33% with an increase in exports of 42% and in milk production of 50%. The aquaculture sector is to expand by 300%.

‘We fully share your view’, Environmental Commissioners Dacin Ciolos [Agriculture] and Janez Potocnik [Environment] wrote, ‘that Food Harvest 2020 would benefit from both an Strategic Environmental Assessment under that Directive and from an Appropriate Assessment under the Habitats Directive’.

The Commissioners informed FIE that the ‘Commission’s service were currently looking at the plan in the light of your submissions’ and will revert to the organisation ‘once they have concluded the examination of the issues arising.’

Read the letter     |     Press Release 

// Read More //

The release of data about the environmental impact of Scottish open cage salmon fish farms has led to a call by west cork based ‘Save Bantry Bay’ for the Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney to release similar data here in Ireland.

The Scottish data released showed a 110% increase in the amount of toxic chemicals used to treat the sea lice parasite in the past four years and a thirteen fold increase since 2005 as resistance increased. Salmon production has only increased by 23% over the same period.

The chemicals used are highly toxic to marine species such as lobsters and prawns. SEPA assessments of the seabed conditions under and around the cages deemed 137 fish farms (44%) “unsatisfactory”.

Save Bantry Bay, a local group formed to oppose the expansion of Norwegian Marine Harvest’s operations in Bantry Bay, said that they believed the Irish situation was in line with the Scottish figures but that their request under AIE had been refused by the Government.

See the Press Release

// Read More //

FIE has ‘lambasted’ the IFA, according to the media, after a letter from the organization was given lead position in the Irish Times letter’s page and picked up by RTE’s Morning Ireland’s ‘What it says in the Papers Today’.

The letter responds to Richie Flynn, the IFA long standing fish farming advocate, who claimed that delays in licensing were ‘inexplicable’. FIE’s Tony Lowes responded that the delay – to allow for proper environmental studies to be conducted – “has been explained again and again” by Minister for the Marine, Simon Coveney.  Calling salmon farming “a highly polluting industry”, he writes that discharges of nitrogen and phosphorous from salmon farms “can fuel toxic algae blooms, which have cost the shellfish industry dear”.

The letter gives the population equivalent of nitrogen and phosphorus from the proposed Bantry Bay fish farm as equivalent to the load from the sewage of a town 10 times the size of Bantry, with the Galway Bay proposed mega–farm as equivalent to twice the population of Galway city.

Read the other issues raised

// Read More //