By Westcoaster.ca Staff

A toxic chemical linked to the deaths of countless North American pets did not wind up in a Clayoquot Sound salmon farm’s feed, says a company spokesman.
This week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration confirmed it had detected traces of melamine – a toxic chemical – in a batch of Canadian fish-feed shipped to the U.S.
Spencer Evans, general manager of Creative Salmon, said the only wheat product his company uses in its feed is Canadian and organic.
“We’ve never purchased the feed in question,” said Evans. “[We] would never purchase that brand of feed.”
Evans, however, said he feared the melamine-tainted feed could have been fed to smolts raised for the wild.
Dave Groves, of Sea Spring Salmon Farms Ltd., a Chemainus company that supplies Chinook smolts to Creative Salmon and runs a wild salmon-enhancement hatchery, said one 60-kilogram bag of feed, which may have contained melamine, was fed to smolts raised for its wild salmon-enhancement hatchery this past winter.
“I don’t think we know for certain there was melamine in the rations – possibly,” he said.
If it was in the feed, he said, the melamine likely had no effect because it was in such a low concentration and the smolts were under five grams.
Groves, said, his company raises about 80,000 smolts for its salmon enhancement program each year.