Award-winning journalist Sandra Bartlett joins us to uncover the unsettling realities of fish farming in British Columbia with her impactful podcast, "The Salmon People." We discuss some of the social and environmental controversies surrounding salmon farming in Canada including the interconnections between wild and farmed salmon in the region, how sea lice have devastated marine populations, and the ways in which indigenous groups are resisting industry interests.  

Date Recorded: 8 May 2024

Sandra Bartlett is an award-winning journalist based in Toronto.  She worked as a producer and reporter in NPR's Investigative Unit based in Washington. In 20 plus years at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, she worked around the world – from Guantanamo Bay to Bangladesh, Pakistan, Uganda, and Israel. She now produces investigative podcast series. The Poison Detectives follows how a firefighter’s wife and a corporate lawyer in different parts of the U.S. get pulled into solving separate mysteries, cows and deer haemorrhage to death in West Virginia and something that could be giving firefighters cancer. The Salmon People, the focus of this episode, tells the story of government malfeasance and industry collaboration to farm salmon on the Pacific Ocean waterways in British Columbia.  Verified: Dust Up is about the dangers of Johnson & Johnson baby powder and the risk of ovarian cancer.  

Featured:
 The Salmon People, a podcast by Sandra Bartlett.

A Stain Upon the Sea: West Coast Salmon Farming by Stephen Hume, Alexandra Morton et al.

What a Fish Knows by Jonathan Balcombe. 

The Animal Highlight, a sister podcast 

The Animal Turn is part of the  iROAR, an Animals Podcasting Network and can also be found on A.P.P.L.E, Twitter, and Instagram

A.P.P.L.E
Animals in Politics, Law, and Ethics researches how we live in interspecies societies and polities.

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The Animal Turn is hosted and produced by Claudia Hirtenfelder and is part of the iROAR Network. Learn more on our website.

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