Society for the Positive Awareness of Aquaculture

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The Society for the Positive Awareness for Aquaculture and spinning Salmon

According to Spinning Farmed Salmon[1]:

The Society for the Positive Awareness for Aquaculture (SPAA) was an important element in a complex web of pro-industry lobbyists and communications actors. The SPAA presents itself as a ‘grassroots’ initiative.[2] In fact it is a front group for the salmon farming industry. The SPAA website states its purpose is ‘to challenge the myths and misinformation surrounding the salmon farming industry worldwide’.[3]
SPAA staff at the time included Laurie Jensen, and Leanne Brunt, both of whom were current or former aquaculture industry employees. Jensen, President of the SPAA, is also Vice President and Sales Manager for AKVASmart Canada. AKVASmart is ‘the world’s leading supplier of fish farming and information technology and also competence to the aquaculture industry’,[4] operating in Australia, Canada, Chile, Norway and Scotland. ’.
Jensen reportedly claims the ‘SPAA is a non-profit society receiving no funding from the industry’[5] though the SPAA website notes that membership is open to ‘any individual or corporation interested in promoting the positive awareness of aquaculture’[6] The online membership form advertises a corporate membership rate of $250 and notes that the benefits of membership include ‘recognition as a corporate sponsor’.[7] Jensen’s role as a sales manager for AKVASmart tends to undermine her protestations. According to one report of an SPAA event:
Ms. Jensen also claims that she is a ‘working environmentalist,’ a phrase lifted years ago from the anti-environmental campaign of the forest industry. …. Apparently the belief is that being a ‘working environmentalist’ is good, as opposed to all other environmentalists who, by inference, are non-workers and therefore bad. I found the working environmentalist phrase from Ms. Jensen to be slightly hypocritical however, based on a letter printed in the Campbell River Mirror back in March, in which she writes: ‘I once considered myself to be an environmentalist. However, I no longer consider myself an environmentalist the way I used to. The current BC-based environmental groups… have mostly turned into eco-terrorist groups and (have) paid protestors against anything that is resource based and economic. They have waged a campaign of misinformation and harassment against the aquaculture industry. They are using the same tactics against aquaculture as they did against logging and mining. I only hope that they don’t have the same level of success. I guess a bully is still a bully no matter what you want to call yourselves. I pray for discernment as I look for the truth. No more will these groups get my support.’[8]

People

Notes

  1. ↑ David Miller, Spinning Farmed Salmon (part 2 of 3) Spinwatch 28 May 2008
  2. ↑ Positive Aquaculture Awareness ‘NDP leader’s call for BC farmed salmon boycott flies in the face of new evidence that shows eating salmon can help prevent Alzheimer’s’ News Release, 7 September 2004, http://www.farmfreshsalmon.org/images/PDFS/090704Salmonboycott.pdf
  3. ↑ Society for the Positive Awareness of Aquaculture http://www.farmfreshsalmon.org
  4. ↑ AKVASmart http://www.akvasmart.com
  5. ↑ Asper, C. ‘The Stamp on The Back of my Hand’ Watershed Watch, August 2003 http://web.archive.org/web/20031207151507/http://watershed-watch.org/ww/cottus_asper.html
  6. ↑ http://www.farmfreshsalmon.org/D136.cfm?open27=275
  7. ↑ http://www.farmfreshsalmon.org/images/PDFS/MembershipFormsversion3.pdf
  8. ↑ Asper, C. ‘The Stamp on The Back of my Hand’ Watershed Watch, August 2003 http://web.archive.org/web/20031207151507/http://watershed-watch.org/ww/cottus_asper.html
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