Anti-salmon farming organizations well funded

Odd Grydeland At least 35 Environmental Non-Governmental Organizations (ENGO's) in the United States and Canada appear to be involved in promoting Alaskan "wild" salmon and/or demarketing farmed salmon. At least 17 American non-profit foundations fund these 35 ENGO's. These 17 foundations have assets in excess of $ US 31 billion. (Meanwhile, much of the Alaskan "wild" salmon is produced in hatcheries, fed commercial salmon feed made for farmed salmon, and often kept in net-pens before being released into the ocean- only to be caught on their return a year or two later). In the period 1999 - 2005, more than $US 152 million has been granted to such ENGO's. As an example, the Vancouver, B.C. based David Suzuki Foundation has received $ US 8,184,368 since 1999. This organization has been actively campaigning against salmon farming in B.C. for many years. Its main contributors during this period has been the Lannan Foundation ($ US 1,955,000), the David & Lucille Packard Foundation ($ US 1,502,100) and the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation ($ US 921,972). The extent that these ENGO's will go to in order to discredit farmed salmon is astonishing. Again- using the David Suzuki Foundation as an example- the leader of that organization stated during a public event in Toronto in 2004 that "..farmed salmon is poison- I would never serve it to my kids". And the organization's Aquaculture Specialist Lynn Hunter- in a widely distributed e-mail a year earlier proclaimed that "Tormenting fish farmers is fun -- it really, really is. Aren't I sweet?". Lynn Hunter now works for the Pure Salmon Campaign- a global project of the National Environmental Trust, which received another $ US 3,825,000 from US foundations since 2001.