Pizza Pizza Privatizing Natural Resources: Boycott

Pizza Pizza and the Great Lakes

Toronto, Monday November 20, 2006: Pizza Pizza’s communication staff were ordered mute last week when asked about their partnership with the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH) and sponsorship of the Ringwood Fish Hatchery in Ringwood Ontario. This fish hatchery has been leased to the OFAH by the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and produces pacific salmon and rainbow trout for release into the Great Lakes.

Not only is pacific salmon and rainbow trout non-native to the Great Lakes, the leasing of the stocking program to a private organization with corporate sponsorship begins the process of privatizing natural resources management in Ontario.

"This transfer of responsibility is done very quietly without any public input," says AnnaMaria Valastro of the Peaceful Parks Coalition. "And of course Pizza Pizza, being a private corporation, can tell concerned citizens to take a hike, and that's exactly what they've done."

In addition to the release of pacific salmon and rainbow trout, Ontario is releasing atlantic salmon into Lake Ontario too. "Atlantic salmon is native to Lake Ontario, but it is the first time in the history of Mother Earth that pacific and atlantic salmon have swam in the same waters," says Valastro.

The Great Lakes, once an awe inspiring natural system, has been bastardized and urbanized for corporate and commercial profit.

Pizza Pizza refused to disclosure the amount of money they have pumped into the fish hatchery. "I wouldn't be surprised if the next edition of hunting magazines featured a new exotic pizza heaped with invasive species," says Valastro.

The Peaceful Parks will begin informing Pizza Pizza customers at their Bloor and Spadina location of their involvement in the privatizing of natural resources management and stocking of exotics into the Great Lakes.

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For more information, please call AnnaMaria Valastro 416.785.8636

Note to the Editor:

Pizza Pizza has long been considered an environmental "bad boy". In the early 1990s, they were the focus of a very successful grassroots boycott campaign organized by the Friends of the Lubicon. Pizza Pizza refused to stop purchasing pizza bags from logging giant Daishowa. Diashowa was logging in Lubicon Cree territory in northern Alberta. The boycott successfully forced Pizza Pizza to find another supplier of pizza bags.

Aspects of the forestry industry in Ontario have also been privatized. While the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources sets forestry guidelines, they have little or no resources for regular "on the ground" inspections or inventories such as "species at risk". These responsibilities have now fallen onto the forestry companies.