To the editor: A latest opinion piece on aquaculture rightly stresses the necessity for accountable practices (“Manufacturing facility farming of fish is brewing pathogens,” Feb. 10). As a analysis veterinarian with practically 30 years within the discipline, I agree. However criticism should even be accountable.
Antibiotic resistance is an actual concern, which is why cautious biosecurity, water-quality administration and prudent remedy practices are central to each analysis and industrial operations. Good husbandry — not hyperbolic imagery — is what protects fish and customers alike.
Portraying salmon broodstock rearing circumstances as akin to being “stuffed right into a yard swimming pool” and selling “inbreeding” is deceptive. Fashionable salmonid breeding packages are rigorously managed beneath skilled, science-based requirements to make sure genetic integrity and produce strong, high-performing inventory.
These interested in aquaculture would achieve much more by consulting practitioners than by counting on caricatured depictions that misrepresent the business.
Chris Good, Shepherdstown, W. Va.
This author is director of analysis on the Conservation Fund’s Freshwater Institute.
