NOFF launches Consumer Information Campaign in metropolitan mainland Australia
NOFF has launched a Consumer Information Campaign in metropolitan mainland Australia - starting with central Melbourne where drivers, commuters and shoppers are being greeted with our message at Flinders Street station and on major freeways into and out of the city.
The huge red and white billboard "Eating Salmon? Killing Tasmania" (9m x 14m), launched early on Monday is greeting tens of thousands of commuters, shoppers and drivers at Flinders Street Station in the heart of Melbourne.
"The message is clear: If you love Tassie, don't eat farmed
salmon. Every bite you take is destroying our marine life and waterways."
Commuter traffic on the Westgate Freeway in South Melbourne is receiving the same message on a billboard measuring 13m x4m and, later, on Dandenong Road at Malvern measuring 9m x 3m.
The campaign will extend to other metropolitan areas as the campaign evolves.
All the illuminated panels are premium CBD and inner urban sites designed to inject awareness of Tasmania's plight and pique curiosity with the message.
NOFF president, Peter George, says the new billboard campaign was provoked by the 100% foreign-owned salmon farming industry's refusal to take any responsibility for the immense environmental damage it's doing to Tasmania's beloved rivers and waterways.
"We now see an industry fully resolved to drive the Maugean skate to extinction—a species unique to Tasmania and as old the dinosaurs — rather than see their tax avoiding foreign owners' profits in any way reduced."
"Salmon Tasmania's Luke Martin has pledged the foreign-owned industry will not give up a single job or a single fish to protect the Maugean Skate, and that's the truth of this rotten industry."
"Instead of facing up to its responsibilities, the industry replays the old tobacco and fossil fuel industry playbook of claiming thousands of jobs are at risk and that there are multiple causes for the skate's likely extinction, when the facts and science are clear that none of these claims are true."
"Australians need to know every time they eat Tasmanian salmon they are killing Tasmania—driving a species to extinction, threatening Tasmanian World Heritage Area in Macquarie Harbour, laying waste to coastal areas all around the south east of Tasmania, and polluting our drinking water catchments.
"The multinationals that own Tassal, Huon Aquaculture and Petuna have no stake in our island's future and have ignored the growing demands of Tasmanians to transition out of our waterways and on to land. Globally, billions of dollars are being invested in land-based production, providing sustainable jobs while reducing environmental impact.
"The multinationals in Tasmania have no incentive to make the move because they pay a mere pittance for use of public waterways while paying no tax, taking profits offshore and destroying our waterways with impunity.