Popham taking her job seriously

Re: “Farmed salmon not minister’s preferred menu,” column, March 3. Les Leyne appears baffled by Agriculture Minister Lana Popham’s attitude toward B.C.’s open-net salmonfarming industry. She likes every B.C. agricultural product he can think of except farmed salmon. He portrays this as if it were an eccentric, irrational hatred. He thinks this is “a clash between beliefs and responsibilities.”

He implies darkly that “sensitive negotiations with concerned First Nations” might underlie her supposed threats to end some fish-farm tenures. Leyne sees only the cash value of the industry and ignores its threat to B.C. Open your other eye, Mr. Leyne.

Not once does Leyne recognize that there is ample reason to curtail open-net salmon farming. The same foreign corporations at work here have already destroyed wild salmon runs in their own country. “Norwegian farmed salmon” on a label is seen as a black mark in Europe — nothing to boast of at all.

In a few short years, their exotic species, imported diseases, filthy farm and processing practices are well on their way to destroying our own salmon, which have flourished for millennia.

Popham is taking her responsibilities seriously, and her beliefs are well founded. Let us join Washington state, which has just sensibly voted to phase out open-net fish farms.