My guess is the average sport fisher does not know who Don Staniford is. And I venture that Staniford doesn't know the difference between a bull head and a bull trout, or even how to catch a salmon. But the roughly 300,000 licenced sport fishers in sa国际传媒 owe him their gratitude. That is because he has been fearless in his opposition to inocean fish farms, particularly in sa国际传媒, Scotland, Norway and other countries.
Staniford's approach to criticizing the industry that has in recent months had well-reported disease problems in sa国际传媒, Washington, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, is flamboyant in the extreme and sometimes foolhardy. His approach lies somewhere between Monty Python and Darth Vader, with the Energizer Bunny supplying manic energy to his 24-hour a day activism.
Mainstream sa国际传媒 sued him for defamation in February 2012. Judge Adair has just released her findings. I have excised five pages of relevant clauses from her ruling and you may find it on my blog, fishfarmnews.blogspot.com, which also contains the link to her 71 page ruling - worth reading in its entirety.
Mainstream's reasons are summarized in Clause 10: "Mainstream claims that, in their natural and ordinary meaning, Mr. Staniford's statements, in context, meant and were understood to mean that Mainstream's business and products kill people, and that Mainstream is knowingly marketing a carcinogenic product that causes illness, death and harm. Mainstream says that the "sting" arising from Mr. Staniford's publications is that farmed salmon - like smoking - causes cancer, and that the salmon farming industry is as odious and dishonest as the tobacco industry."
Pretty damning stuff. And Judge Adair roasts Staniford's character: "[his] value judgments... [are] prejudiced, exaggerated and obstinate [171]." And, [from 174]: "Mr. Staniford's judgements have no balance because balance does not exist in Mr. Staniford's world when it comes to salmon farming. He has dedicated himself to eradicating it." She also found that his comments were defamatory [118], and that they applied to Mainstream [141].
But at the end, Adair excused Staniford of defamation on the grounds that he believed what he was saying was true. Having read a lot of what he has written, I ignore his inflammatory approach and followup his links to the science. They are on the money.
My opinion is that, sadly, the top four problems for 10 species of salmonids are: fish farms, DFO, run of river power and global warming. The last we can do little about quickly, but the other three can be addressed today with policy decisions. The Cohen Commission into Fraser sockeye collapse reconvened in December 2011 to assess whether fish farm diseases kill wild salmon. Its report is due by Oct. 30. I'll let you know what it says.
Sport fishers should pat Staniford on the back. In fairness, I don't see that fish farms need to be eradicated - they need to be on land where their densityrelated disease amplification affects no other fish or species.
