The Claim

Last June, the governmental Canadian General Standards Board released proposed standards for organic salmon farming. The goal: to overcome trade barriers and help develop niche markets. But will that organic sticker really mean organic-quality farmed fish, or is it just covering up some nasty production practices?

The Investigation

Though the standards board is a federal organization, the new rules were largely produced by a business coalition called the Canadian Organic Aquatic Producers Association and have raised concerns among environmentalists. In a letter to the board published last August, a group of more than 40 leading organic, conservation, and food-safety organizations in Canada and the U.S. argued the draft standards would make certification possible with “minimal changes to current, conventional [farming] practices.”

They have a point. When people think of organic, they usually think that means no pesticides and no antibiotics. Under the proposed standards, salmon farms are allowed to use pesticides routinely, instead of as a last resort (as is stipulated in Canada’s current standards for organic farming on land). Fish can also receive antibiotics and still be called organic.

Just as questionable: the proposed regulations would allow up to 30 percent of feed to be non-organic until proper feed is commercially available. Current regulations for livestock only allow non-organic feed for 10 days following a “catastrophic event.” Farms can also continue to use unlimited amounts of wild fish as feed. Canadian farms produced over 100,000 tonnes of salmon in 2009. According to the non-profit SeaWeb, three pounds or more of wild fish are required to produce one pound of salmon. Do the math and the potential drain on wild stocks seems far from sustainable.

Net-cage farming, which allows waste to litter the ocean (but is much cheaper than sustainable alternatives), is also given a pass. “Consumers expect that organic products are produced in a way that does not require antibiotics, pesticides, or other chemicals, and does not harm the environment,” says Shauna MacKinnon, spokesperson for the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform, created in 2001 to advocate for a sustainable coast. “Organic aquaculture needs to meet these same principles before it can call itself organic.”

The Investigation

The proposed standards are about rationalizing business as usual, not real change. With pesticides, antibiotics, and nets all given the thumbs-up under the proposed standards, the organic label starts to sound like a bad joke—one that could be disastrous for the organic industry as a whole.

Computer model of a Bisphenol-A molecule.

Canadians – a bunch of walking, talking BPA vessels? Apparently so. Statistics Canada recently released results from their first nationwide look into bisphenol A, and the results aren’t pretty.

According to a Globe and Mail report on the stats, 91 per cent of Canadians tested show some sort of BPA exposure, and teenagers carry most of the brunt, with their bodies often containing up to 30 per cent more BPA than the rest of the population.

When the first round of BPA warnings surfaced years ago, it looked like Canada would take a stand that could lead to the ingredient being declared a toxic chemical. And since then, while that declaration has stalled, the levels of BPA found in our bodies continues to rise.

It can seem like fear mongering, but BPA really is in a shocking amount of everyday products. CDs, tin can liners, and plastic water bottles all contain BPA. Most people get a steady BPA diet through food packaging. The big deal is that the chemical mimics estrogen — the average level of BPA in our bodies is actually close to 1,000 times the normal level of naturally occurring estrogen.

Of course, some scientists, and those who are involved in the BPA industry, say that just because something is in our body, doesn’t mean it’s causing harm. And it’s true that while we can speculate on what this added BPA might mean for us, we don’t know for a fact if it causes health problems.

But it’s concerning the ease with which we let synthetic products become a part of our diet with very few restrictions. The argument that it’s probably not causing any harm to our bodies is ridiculous — seeing as how BPA’s not a naturally occurring ingredient in our food system, we shouldn’t be ingesting it.

It’s interesting that the media also recently wondered why puberty continues to hit our adolescents earlier and earlier. If what we’re putting into our bodies as fuel isn’t natural, our bodies won’t act that way either. (Of course it hasn’t been proved if there are any links between chemicals like BPA and early puberty, though the New York Times article linked above does mention it briefly.)

The pessimist in me wonders if it’s too little too late now. We’ve been exposed to products with BPA so long that all the studies are doing is proving that our bodies are at the whim of packaging manufacturers. This is testing that shoud have been done years ago, but it’s only now that we’ll get a peek at what’s happening to us.