There are three things.
Yes, in a lot of its published material and particularly in international scientific forums, I think DFO, to maintain its credibility with scientists from other countries, has to acknowledge and does acknowledge that there are problems associated with net cages. It's pretty hard to deny when you look at the effects the lice have had in Norway, the problems they're increasingly having with resistance to chemical treatments.
Trevor Swerdfager, a former director general at DFO, told me in a face-to-face meeting one time when we were discussing this that on the east coast he had been seeing lice infestation levels per fish of 200 to 300 lice per fish. Those numbers are staggering and indicate why it's possible that one of the companies may have broken the law and, in a desperate attempt to control the lice, used cypermethrin, which is a banned chemical in Canada.
I think the department is very aware of the problems. They don't acknowledge that a lot publicly and domestically, but internationally they will acknowledge it, even in writing in their reports, for example, the one I cited from NASCO.
Yes, DFO is actively engaged in promotion of the open net cage aquaculture industry. Again, I have to stress that I don't criticize our government supporting industry and business in Canada, but I think the government has a responsibility to support those industries that are making an effort to be responsible and trending toward more sustainable practices. It's disheartening for me to see DFO chasing us around when we talk to retailers, showing up afterwards to try to undermine what we have said and to promote the open net cage industry with claims of sustainability. I don't mind our department giving the facts, but I think they do an awful lot of work and give an awful lot of money to the aquaculture industry for promotion and marketing. That should be the industry's own responsibility. Our department's responsibility should be the health and protection and sustainability of ocean ecosystems and of our wild stocks. I think they have a fundamentally conflicted mandate, acting as both the regulator and PR agency for the aquaculture industry.
Certification is going to be an increasingly prominent issue. A host of certification schemes are in development. The Canadian government is working with the CGSB and DFO in developing organic standards for open net cage aquaculture in Canada. I believe those standards are going to undermine the credibility of Canadian organic certification as a whole, if they continue to be as weak, as they currently are. Certification and labelling initiatives are being developed by the industry in isolation, by multi-stakeholder groups like the Salmon Aquaculture Dialogue. I think they're going to take increasing prominence and importance.
We'll see similar trends to what we've seen with the Marine Stewardship Council, whereby more retailers and more consumers are going to be seeking a certification label they feel they can trust. That's going to be the key issue. There will be a proliferation of branding and labels and eco-labels, but at the end of the day, there will be a hierarchy of which ones are credible and which are just a rubber stamp.