Nothing to fear in Vegas

Conference looks at how scare-mongering has impeded industry’s growth

The triennial World Aquaculture Society’s conference and exhibition was held in Las Vegas at the end of last month. More than 150 companies, including Fish Farmer, took stands at the venue in the Paris Hotel and Convention Centre, representing around 20 different countries, from the US and Canada to much of Europe, China, Israel and Australia .

During the conference, staged over four days, presentations covered, feeds, aquaponics, shrimp health, offshore aquaculture, marketing and integrated multi-trophic aquaculture.

One prominent theme during the week was media coverage of aquaculture and how it affects innovation. Dave Conley, of AquaBounty Technologies, pioneer of GM salmon, chaired a meeting on the subject and gave a talk headed AquaBounty’s Aquadvantage Salmon – a Prolonged Journey to Market: How Innovation was Impeded by Activists and Media Fear-Mongering.

‘The journey of AquaBounty’s innovative salmon from research bench to market acceptance has become a case study in the strategic use of misinformation, pressure tactics, media manipulation, and political interference to block the use of a technology with far-reaching applications in food production, and in human and animal health and medicine, and environmental protection and remediation, to name but a few,’ said Conley.

‘The resources spent on combating the many coordinated activist campaigns to effectively kill the company’s application to the FDA have ple that faced bankruptcy twice in its history.

‘Having to cut staff and curtail its R&D activities to focus on survival is something that most aquaculture entrepreneurs have experienced at one time or another.