BC Wild Berries: Unfit for Human and Animal Consumption?

UNFIT FOR HUMAN AND ANIMAL CONSUMPTION?

By Peter Ewart

Is it a good idea to pick and eat wild raspberries and blueberries in forest cutblocks in the Central and Northern Interior of British Columbia? Not if these lands have been sprayed with the weed killer glyphosate sometime in the last few years. And the same caution holds true for wildlife like moose and bears who, besides berries, also consume large quantities of fireweed, willow, and dogwood shoots, all of which can contain low levels of glyphosate residue for relatively long periods of time.

These are the conclusions that can be drawn from a recently published research study carried out by a team of University of Northern BC scientists, N. Botten, L.J. Wood, and J.R. Werner. Their findings go directly against the message repeated by the manufacturer of glyphosate, Bayer-Monsanto, that the weed killer quickly disappears from the plants and general environment after it is sprayed and is not harmful to humans or wildlife.

Currently, certain big forest companies helicopter spray upwards of 17,000 hectares of BC forests (especially in the Interior) with glyphosate every year and this has been going on since the early 1980s. The total area sprayed amounts to 1.3 million hectares either sprayed or manually brushed. The aim is to kill off broad-leafed trees, like birch and aspen, and facilitate the growth of the so-called “money trees” spruce and pine. The forest companies are obligated to do this under provincial government regulation. 44 | June/July/August 2021

The results of this research study are disturbing. For example, one year after glyphosate treatment, 26 percent of raspberry and blueberry fruit samples taken from cutblocks in the research study would be “deemed unfit for human consumption” if assessed by Canadian Food Inspection Agency standards. In addition, glyphosate (and AMPA, the metabolite derived from it) residues were detected in the fruits for at least one full year after spraying. However, low levels of weed killer residue persisted in raspberry shoots, fireweed shoots, and willow shoots for at least six years and in fireweed roots for twelve years.

Indigenous people have complained for years about how eating glyphosate-sprayed berries and medicinal plants has sickened them, and there are anecdotal reports of others being affected. The long-term effect on wildlife is unknown.

In the United States, Canada, and elsewhere, thousands of lawsuits have been launched by individuals who claim that they have contracted cancer and other illnesses because of prolonged exposure to glyphosate with one terminally ill groundskeeper being awarded $289 million in damages in a California court. As a result, the Bayer-Monsanto corporation has agreed to pay $10.9 billion into a fund to settle the thousands of other court cases.

What has been revealed in these legal proceedings is that Bayer-Monsanto has been systematically recruiting scientists

Velvetleaf Blueberry, Vaccinium myrtilloides, Horsefly, BC. Photo: Lisa Bland

to publish studies that defend the use of glyphosate, going so far as to “ghost write” several research studies under their names. Unfortunately, Canadian and American government authorities are basing their decisions to allow widespread glyphosate spraying on such deeply flawed studies.

In BC, there is broad opposition to glyphosate spraying by farmers, trappers, foresters, and others, as well as an organization, Stop the Spray BC stopthespraybc.com founded specifically to oppose the widespread spraying of the weed killer. The chemical has been banned for use on crown lands in Quebec, as well banned completely in Germany, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, and other countries.

Yet the BC provincial government continues to authorize the helicopter spraying of glyphosate across Interior forests, which are already suffering from the pine and spruce beetle epidemics, overcutting, erosion, flooding, fires, and a host of other problems.

Now, berry picking, a pastime that many people in the Central Interior and North have enjoyed since time immemorial, is threatened.

Note: This article was originally published in the Prince George Daily News on May 13, 2021. Reprint permission granted by the author. -GG

Peter Ewart is a writer based in Prince George, British Columbia. He can be reached at: peter. ewart@shaw.ca.

Not on My Watch

By Alexandra Morton Published by Penguin Random House Canada

Alexandra Morton has been called “the Jane Goodall of Canada” because of her passionate 30-year fight to save British Columbia’s wild salmon. Her account of that fight is both inspiring and a roadmap of resistance. “When I went into the wilderness of the BC coast to study whales in 1984, Echo Bay was perfect,” Morton says. “It was a remote archipelago full of salmon and whales, a tiny floathouse community, and three First Nation villages. When the first salmon farm arrived, I thought the industry would bring new families and help keep our one-room school open. I was blissfully unaware that my government decided to give bays where our houses were floating to Scanmar, Stolt, Cermaq, and Grieg to grow millions of Atlantic salmon.”

Morton is a field biologist who became an activist and has done ground-breaking research on the damaging impact of ocean-based salmon farming on the coast of British Columbia. She first studied communications in Bottle-nosed dolphins and then moved on to recording and analyzing the sounds of captive orcas at Marineland of the Pacific in California, where she witnessed the birth, and death, of the first orca conceived in captivity.

In 1984, she moved to the remote BC coast, aiming to study the language and culture of wild orca clans, but soon found herself at the heart of a long fight to protect the wild salmon that are the province's keystone species.

A few years after the salmon farming industry arrived in Echo Bay, the whales abandoned the area. Atlantic salmon appeared in the rivers, wild salmon died with open sores never seen before, toxic algae blooms began, and then the sea lice epidemics started. Sea lice are a natural parasitic crustacean, but their populations exploded on the captive salmon. Every spring young wild salmon trying to migrate past the salmon farms were eaten to death.

The wild salmon returns around Echo Bay dropped to .1%

Gradually, Morton found her voice. “Clearly, I couldn’t stop them,” she says, “but they couldn’t stop me either.”

She published science on the impact of these industrial marine feedlots, engaged in endless government forums, led protests with thousands of people, marched 100s of kilometres down Vancouver Island, paddled the lower Fraser River with 100 people for a week, and marched with them through Vancouver to the Cohen Commission into the collapse of the Fraser River Sockeye salmon. She spoke at the companies’ AGMs in Norway and took the industry to court five times and never lost.

“Using the Access to Information Act, I read thousands of internal Department of Fisheries and Oceans documents,” she says. “Canada and the Province of BC were covering up the catastrophic damage caused by the release of viruses, bacteria, and sea lice.”

But that was only the beginning.

“Bears and whales starved and when enough people abandoned Echo Bay, my government burned our school to the ground,” Morton says. “In 2017, I found myself standing on a salmon farm in a winter storm

Norwegian well boat Ronja Islander tied to salmon farm on BC's coast. Atlantic farm salmon are pumped into the ship and bathed in hydrogen peroxide to try to remove sea lice. Photo: Tavish Campbell Alexandra Morton is an independent biologist who has worked to protect wild salmon from salmon farms for 35 years. Photo: Sea Shepherd Society

surrounded by RCMP dressed in riot gear. First Nations were pushing back. They had lost their most valuable food resource. Shelves once packed with jars of salmon now lay bare. Mowi, the biggest salmon farming company in the world, hired a group called Black Cube and boats with blacked out windows began following me. We occupied salmon farms for 280 days and things began to change.”

In a series of remarkable events, an ancient government re-emerged and stepped between this disastrous industry-government alliance and their wild salmon.

On December 17, 2020, Fisheries Minister Bernadette Jordan made a landmark decision to honour the demands of seven First Nations on the Fraser River sockeye migration route when she informed the three Norwegian-base companies operating in BC they were not allowed to put anymore Atlantic salmon in 19 farms in that region.

“Desperate to maintain a hold on this coast, the industry is suing Canada and pressuring chiefs, while I am on the water observing the young wild salmon from the Fraser River swimming through fish farmfree channels for the first time in 30 years,” Morton says. “They look beautiful. Sea lice infection on them has dropped 95 percent from last year. Fraser River salmon will finally the chance to make it to sea.

“This fight is not over. But the tide has turned.” -GG

Morton has co-authored more than 20 scientific papers on the impact of salmon farming on migratory salmon, founded the Salmon Coast Research Station, has been featured on 60 Minutes, and has been key to many legal and protest actions against the industry, including the recent First Nations-led occupation of salmon farms on the Broughton. For more info about where to purchase visit: penguinrandomhouse.ca/ books/623054/not-on-my-watch-by-alexandra-morton/9780735279667