Bricks and Mortars

There has been much talk of incivility plaguing the Nordic Aquafarms debate, but truth is the essence of civility, and here Nordic is coming up woefully short. In two recent columns I wrote about numerous misrepresentations made by Nordic regarding its proposed Belfast fish factory, such as the suggestion that fish can't escape from land-based fish factories — they can and they do. But since the publication of those two columns, Nordic has migrated from mere misrepresentations squarely into the realm of outright lies. At a June 12 public information meeting, a panel of purported experts fielded softball questions tossed out in soothing tones by Des Fitzgerald, founder of Belfast's Ducktrap River, now owned by Marine Harvest, the world's biggest salmon producer and a Norwegian corporation with a list of environmental problems as long as your arm. After Fitzgerald's questions, the panel took questions from the audience, and in response to a question about