Feds Sidestep Law to Let BC’s Biggest Fishery Sell Catch as Farm Feed – The Tyee

Industry asks for legal exception after Russian embargo drops bottom out of market for Pacific hake.

The economic squeeze of a Russian trade embargo has prompted Canada to sidestep its own laws by allowing B.C.’s biggest fishery to sell thousands of tonnes of high-quality fish as slurry to feed farmed salmon and chickens.

Russia is the dominant market for B.C.’s most abundant food fish, locally known as Pacific hake — a close relative of haddock that roams the edges of the North American continental shelf in schools comprising at least a million tonnes of biomass.

But a 2014 Russian embargo banning the purchase of many Canadian exports including seafood, imposed in response to sanctions protesting Russia’s aggression in the Crimea, means that a fishery worth $40 million annually in landed value each year has lost its primary market. Ukraine has also been a big customer of hake, but can no longer afford to import it.

Read More: http://thetyee.ca/News/2015/08/05/BC-Fishery-Catch-As-Farm-Feed/