Aquaculture: A Field by Bureaucratic Fiat

Abstract

In France, the CNEXO (the French council that is concerned with all ocean-related research and development, except fisheries) and other government agencies have made a concerted attempt to create a field of aquaculture. GIDA, (Groupe Interministériel pour le Développement de l’Aquaculture — Interministerial Committee for the Development of Aquaculture) was established to coordinate the activities of a range of interested ministerial services and to centralise information. In addition, Regional Delegates to Aquaculture (Délégués Régionaux à l’Aquaculture) were created. Their double role is to collect information in their own region and to communicate both this information and decisions made by national agencies to the different parties concerned. Thus, results from autonomous localities are brought together and made available to all those involved. Finally, laboratories (like the Institute National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA) laboratory of fish physiology) were moved from Paris suburbs to more ‘maritime’ locations (for instance in Brittany), and were required to consider more applied questions (like antibiotic treatment and vaccination at trout and salmon farms in the estuaries of Brittany) in addition to their more usual basic research on pathogenic agents and fish genetics (Anon, 1981).