The BC Salmon Farmers Association new ‘independent’ sea lice report

Roy L Hales/ Cortes Currents - The BC Salmon Farmers Association has just released what they claim is an independent study of ‘Sea lice in the Discovery Islands.’

Their study is filled with terms like – “independent data,” “independently collected data,” “independent professional biological consultants,” “independently collected and analyzed scientific data,” “independent monitoring,” “independent sampling,” and “independent biologists” – but does not say who actually did the research.

When I asked the BC Salmon Farmers Association, they emailed back ‘Mainstream Consulting.’

There are links to Mainstream Biological Consulting’s monitoring reports in the study’s footnotes, and under two graphs, and these lead to documents ‘Prepared for MOWI Canada West, Cermaq Canada, and Grieg Seafood BC Ltd.

These are the three largest salmon farming companies in Western Canada.

So I told Brian Kingzett, Director of Science and Policy for the BC Salmon Farmer’s Association, “When I hear the word ‘independent,’ I don’t think of someone who’s hired by you, but of somebody who’s totally independent.”

To which he replied,” I would argue that being independent also means not having an agenda.”

Kingzett’s name is the only one on the front cover of the report, as the contact person.

Brian Kingzett’s name is under “Contact,” click on image to access the report
He explained there are two components to the work flow. Mainstream Biological Consulting collected the raw data.

“The only thing I’ve done, in this, is I’ve taken the datasets for five years that have been produced on an annual basis. And I have summarized them together. So basically that’s all I’ve done. That’s my role in this whole thing. So the analysis of the existing data is mine, and the literature review is mine,” said Kingzett.

In the course of our conversation, Kingzett made a number of references to the Salmon Coast Field Station in the Broughton Archipelago. So I reached out to two of the station’s directors, both of which are scientists with numerous papers published in peer reviewed publications.

Photo credit: Screenshot of Brian Kingzett taken during the interview