Leading organic farmer criticises "Organic Fish"

UK - In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, a leading organic farmer has bitterly criticised the awarding of organic status to cod and salmon farms which he accuses of being industrial systems that would never be seen as "green" on land.

Peter Kindersley, the former publisher who owns Sheepdrove Organic Farm, near Lambourn, Berks, told The Daily Telegraph: "They have huge numbers of fish together like battery chickens. Nature is never like that. I accept that the rest of the world is going to do it, but it is a betrayal of everything the organic movement stands for."

Mr Kindersley said the farming of carnivorous fish such as salmon and cod was like "farming tigers" - based as it is, to some extent, on fish oil and meal from overfished stocks of smaller fish.

The incarceration of large numbers of the same species will lead to deadly diseases which could whip through wild stocks, he warned. "When you put large monocultures together something like the avian flu virus is inevitable. Crucially, you are doing it in the open sea."

Mr Kindersley believes that environmentalists should be promoting vegetarian fish, such as carp, rather than promoting the use of fish which eat several times their weight in smaller fish.

Source: Daily Telegraph