Irish take lice war to EuropeThe European Commissions has requested documents from the Irish Government which were not made available during the recent Commission 'Pilot' investigation into sea lice on Irish salmon farms.
The request follows an objection lodged against the Department of Agriculture by the environmental lobby group Friends of the Irish Environment [FIE] for their handling of the EU investigation into complaints from Irish NGOs on salmon farms and sea lice.
FIE has examined internal Irish Government files which they claim show that the Report requested by the EU during the investigation from Inland Fisheries Ireland [IFI] was concealed by the Department of Agriculture from the investigators.
Janez Potocnik, the European Environmental Commissioner, has told Nessa Childers, MEP, that "all the information and material referred to by FIE will be sought from the Irish Authorities and duly examined" to see if it "justifies reopening the investigation."
The IFI Report entirely contradicted the Department of Agriculture's claims during the Pilot investigation which were based on a Marine Institute study (Jackson et al., 2011). The Institute said the 10 year study proved that infestation of outwardly migrating salmon smolts with sea lice was only a "minor component of the overall marine mortality in the stocks studied". The same Marine Institute study formed the basis of the Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Galway Bay salmon farm.
However, in a critique published recently in the peer-reviewed international Journal of Fish Diseases, where the original paper appeared, four international scientists have re-evaluated the Marine Institute's work. Rather than the 1% of wild salmon mortalities claimed by the Institute, using the same data but correcting three methodological errors the authors show that the true figure is 33% mortalities of wild salmon due to farmed salmon sea lice.
FIE has now provided this critique to the Commission as well as providing data that contradicts the Minister for Agriculture's claim to the Oireachtas that "As far as we are concerned, the sea lice issue is no longer significant."
A FIE statement released with the Commission correspondence says that: "Sea lice infestations continue to rise in spite of the Minister assurances that sea lice are 'no longer an issue'. Marine Harvest's, the country largest producer of farmed salmon with 80% of the country's production, 2013 Annual Report shows that infestations of sea lice have more than trebled, from 6% of their sites in 2010 to 20% in 2012.
"Figures from the Marine Institute itself show that with two-winter salmon, the most vulnerable, the number of sites exceeding the permitted level of sea lice have doubled over the last three years from 24% to 50%."
The Commission has told the organisation that it expects to reach a decision in September.
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