On the question of controlling sea lice and the use of a product called Slice, there are two ways that sea lice are controlled: either by harvesting the fish right out of the farms, or by applying a therapeutant milled into the feed. It goes by the trade name Slice. A very small amount is used to control the sea lice. It kills the sea lice on the fish. It's very effective and has a fairly long residual effect in keeping sea lice off the fish.
We use an extremely small amount of it. I think with the 43 million kilograms of farmed salmon we produced last year, we used 11 kilograms of emamectin benzoate, so very little is used.
It is an approved product for use in Canada. It is a legal product and we are currently using, as I said, very little of it. We're looking toward the opportunity to work with government agencies to expand our ability to use other products and not have to rely entirely on Slice going forward. That's a future research and development process.
You also asked about the controversy about salmon farming on the west coast and why it is so strong. It comes down to the fact that we have a really important and valuable resource in wild salmon on the west coast. Everybody, including myself, who lives out there wants to see the wild salmon maintained. Anything that has the appearance of threatening wild salmon comes under a lot of scrutiny.
Our business is placed in the common waters. We are called upon to operate with the highest degree of environmental caution. We're working through a process of demonstrating to the public and our regulators--soon to be the federal government--that we can operate to a high level of environmental conservation.
It's going to take some time to get those messages out. There are probably some things we need to change along the way as well. We're not saying we're perfect, but we're saying we're getting better every day and we're on the road to improvement for environmental sustainability.