Fish farm illness back east

[Clint r]

Copied from Castanets news service.

Concerns over salmon virus
Photo: Thinkstock.com
The Canadian Press - Apr 3 2:43 pm
A conservation group is criticizing federal and provincial agencies for not publicizing a preliminary test showing the presence of a potentially deadly salmon virus at a New Brunswick aquaculture operation.
The Atlantic Salmon Federation says it heard on Monday that a strain of infectious salmon anemia was reported by an aquaculture company located along the Bay of Fundy.
The virus can be fatal to fish but doesn't cause harm to human health.
Jonathan Carr, the federation's director of research, says he went to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency website but didn't find a report of the incident.
"Without the public knowing what's going on a lot of rumours and wildfires can happen," he said in an interview.
"That's where the province and the CFIA should be upfront ... when these things happen, inform the general public on what's going on and how they're dealing with it."
A spokeswoman for the New Brunswick government said in an email there was a suspected case of virulent infectious salmon anemia detected last month.
"Regarding the suspected case ... the province and the CFIA are aware and are working collaboratively on this," Anne Bull said.
"We are in regular contact with the operator, who is co-operating fully on the matter. Increased surveillance and sampling efforts have been put in place by New Brunswick's chief aquaculture veterinarian."
Pam Parker, director of the Atlantic Canada Fish Farmers Association, an industry group, said in a telephone interview that in March a fish in one cage in a New Brunswick salmon farm was found to be positive for infectious salmon anemia during a preliminary test.
She said the company didn't wait for a confirmation of a final diagnosis by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and proceeded to remove all of the fish from the pen and notified the provincial and federal regulators of their actions.
Parker said other salmon farmers in the area were notified and the affected farm is in quarantine. She said she didn't know the name of the affected salmon farm.
In an email response, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said it requires notification whenever infectious salmon anemia is detected.
"All finds are reported online for public consumption," said spokeswoman Tammy Jarbeau.
Jarbeau did not comment on any specific cases but said pathogenic strains of the virus occur sporadically, while non-pathogenic strains are to be expected every year in the Atlantic area.
Carr said he's glad that the affected fish were killed quickly after the outbreak but he feels more information should have been released after the preliminary tests.
"It's prudent when you have cases like this to get this out to the public."
Parker said the regulations and the process are rigorous.
"We don't understand what the concern is," she said. "The system is working. There is more transparency in salmon farming than any other food producing sector."

 

[agentaqua]

That's exactly why I have been so vocal over the lack of meaningful and timely information over fish disease reporting. Thanks for this Clint.

 

[SpringVelocity]

so there you go it does exist.

 

[Dave]

so there you go it does exist.

Uh, what exists??

 

[steelmadness]

What I read in the original post was this. A preliminary test of 1 fish on 1 farm was suspected of carrying a pathogen that's found naturally occurring in the Atlantic. Before the test was completed the farm, going above and beyond environmental guidelines, removed all fish.

The majority of people don't care where their food comes from. To demand veterinarian transparency in aquaculture is fine...but must be asked of all industries, beef, dairy, hog, chicken.

 

[agentaqua]

You are largely correct Steel.

However, in ALL of the risk assessments and evaluation for disease transfer - it is always heavily stated that there has to be a separation between wild and cultured stocks.

That is why there are buffer zones between cattle and bison in the NWT and AB, for example.

Where that fails - you get transfer of disease to/from wild/cultured stocks - such as bird flue - for example.

However - no buffer zones currently exist between wild and cultured stocks wrt open net-pen salmonid culture due to the porous "open" nature of the technology that allows free passage of diseases and parasites.

Instead, we get a very much sanitized version of a report of a disease months after the outbreak on CFIAs website that states that "somewhere" in BC - there was an outbreak of some reportable disease in the last year - w/o any geographic location.

This way we can't develop an understanding of epidemiology and transfer to wild stocks so we can use that to do risk assessment and mitigation.

This is the only industry that does it's impacts all in the water - and the only one exempt from an environmental assessment under CEAA.

Out of sight - and apparently - out of mind.

 

[searun]

yup, when will we learn. Ocean net pens = big trouble for wild stocks. Having open ocean net pens is like taking your water from a tailings pond of a gold mine. Seriously stupid, period.

 

[shuswap]

You are largely correct Steel.

However, in ALL of the risk assessments and evaluation for disease transfer - it is always heavily stated that there has to be a separation between wild and cultured stocks.

That is why there are buffer zones between cattle and bison in the NWT and AB, for example.

Buffer zones? In BC, beef cattle free range on Crown land and are in the same environment as deer and moose. If you go fishing in the BC interior you will have no problem seeing their white faces and poop all over the place. No separation there. Chickens are not raised in closed barns to the best of my knowledge. How do domestic animals get rabies? Bats, foxes and skunks are the most common transmitters of the disease. Where is the separation there? Rabies is a federally reportable disease. Unlike ISAv, rabies can be very harmful to humans. If there are cattle that are suspected to have a federally reportable virus or disease are those ranchers required to report their preliminary results to the public?

Instead, we get a very much sanitized version of a report of a disease months after the outbreak on CFIAs website that states that "somewhere" in BC - there was an outbreak of some reportable disease in the last year - w/o any geographic location.

I wouldn’t be opposed to the exact location being made public following (and only following) final confirmation, but I am not sure what the general public is going to do with that information. What is the urgency of the public knowing these preliminary results? If there is risk of the public being harmed by these diseases then I agree that there is merit to have preliminary results made public, but we know that there is no evidence to suggest that ISA is harmful to humans.

You suggest this is needed for an “understanding of epidemiology and transfer to wild stocks so we can use that to do risk assessment and mitigation”, but we already know that the origin of these viruses are from the wild and there are measures already in place by fish hatcheries, channels and fish farms to monitor and deal with these incidences. As we can see from the news article, the company removed the fish before final confirmation by the CFIA. With IHNv, we know that adult wild Pacific salmon can be carriers of the virus, but not fall victim the disease (IHN). Cohen Technical Report #1 goes into a very detailed risk analysis of each endemic pathogen in BC waters with regards to Fraser Sockeye. The CFIA, along with its partner groups already conducted a 2 year viral surveillance study looking at some of these viruses in wild fish. The US also conducted similar work. Currently, there are further studies (i.e. Fish Health Initiative by PSF, DFO and Genome BC) underway to address what you are interested in. It should be noted that preliminary results are just that – preliminary. An argument can be made that preliminary results could be taken as being final results by some member of the public creating rumors and misleading information. Confirmation is made public by the CFIA which I understand is not to your satisfaction, but like I said before I don’t understand the specific benefit to the public by knowing the exact location. I don’t mean this to be argumentative – I just don’t understand the reason. It should be noted that when I looked at the CFIA website, terrestrial animals with confirmed cases of federally reportable diseases are treated the same way with regards to the location being vaguely reported. What’s good for one agricultural sector should be good for the other if you are going to use the argument you suggest. That’s my opinion.

 

[shuswap]

so there you go it does exist.

That is exactly what I mean about preliminary results being taken as being final.

 

[salmonkiller01]

Hey Shuswap, ISA is not harmful to humans( but good luck marketing those fish), is it harmful to other species in the marine environment where the farm is?

 

[Clint r]

Free range cattle are definately in the hillls in my area. All over the place and have been for years. Especially in the areas whitetail deer frequent. Last fall cutting firewood, noticed flyers posted all over the woods asking for deer heads to be turned in somewhere. Conservation in my neck of the woods is concerned that cows may be infecting the deer with bovine spongiform encephalitis. Mad cow in laymans terms. Read up on it. Symptoms in humans parallel those of Alzheimer's. Don't know which you might have though until your dead. That's when they can do a brain biopsy. Comforting thought eh?

 

[GLG]

Perhaps the first lesson on Bio-Security is in order for our member of the fish farm industry.
Note the importance of keeping your product away from wild animals.
Something that this industry can but and will not do. Why is that?
[zMUf0y8MTPw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMUf0y8MTPw

 

[agentaqua]

Thank you for your post and your opinion, shuswap – and initiating this discussion.

You do however, seem to be missing the point. Let me explain:

1/ If in BC, or elsewhere - beef cattle are ranging on Crown lands with or without associated disease and parasite transfers back/forth with deer and moose – that is NOT an excuse to NOT do disease risk assessments and mitigation in order to protect both cultured and wild stocks in fish farms or elsewhere,

2/ It has been noticed world-wide that mixing of cultured and wild stocks frequently has unintended consequences – including a very real threat from new or novel diseases infecting naïve hosts, whether they are wild or cultured stocks,

3/ Yes – in both the terrestrial and more recently the aquatic environments – there have been some real examples of this issue showing-up. Just because to date we have not yet noticed an issue between cattle and deer on Crown Lands in BC does not mean we actually know what is going on. There have been numerous, unfortunate learning experiences with so-called “new” diseases such as mad cow, swine flu (vesicular disease), bird flu (influenza), hoof and mouth disease, tuberculosis, anthrax, Foot and mouth disease, Vesicular stomatitis, Peste des petits ruminants, Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, Rinderpest (globally eradicated 2011), Lumpy skin disease, Sheep pox and goat pox, Rift Valley fever, Bluetongue, African horse sickness, Newcastle disease, etc. – it’s a long list that is getting longer every year,

4/ Yes – often belatedly our regulators have had to deal with the above issues, and it starts with generating information (i.e. epidemiology, etc.) about how that particular disease infects hosts, how it is transported, what makes it virulent – and all these other issues that are important in order to understand the risk and to decrease the level of that risk – such as instituting buffer zones for bison/cattle as I previously mentioned. Buffer zones are admittedly not a sure thing wrt isolating disease outbreaks (especially when epidemiology is not known) – then what if there are NO buffer zones at all? Is that MORE precautionary? MORE responsible? Wouldn’t this be the bare-bones least thing to do?

See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology
http://www.enr.gov.nt.ca/sites/default/files/240_manuscript.pdf
http://animaladventurer.blogspot.ca/2011/03/montana-and-federal-officials.html
http://blog.nwf.org/2014/02/give-yellowstone-bison-a-year-round-buffer-zone/
http://www.bisoncentre.com/index.ph...-of-the-hook-lake-wood-bison-recovery-project
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0032842

5/ Yes – even the OIE (which Canada/CFIA/DFO have signed on with and claim they use as their “guide”) now has experience and recommendations about how to do this.

Review: http://slideplayer.com/slide/749102/
http://www.oie.int/doc/ged/D7092.PDF
http://slideplayer.com/slide/730727/
http://www.slideshare.net/charmkey5/oie-guidelines-for-animal-disease-control
And the FAOs: http://www.fao.org/docrep/007/y5325e/y5325e0b.htm

In there they confirm that we need to know the things that should be really, really obvious such as:
Geographic co-ordinates of any outbreaks
Scale
Epidemiology
Barriers
Surveillence

6/ With many diseases – especially for new or novel diseases (ones brought into an area of naïve hosts) – those hosts die within a few days or weeks – as is the case with many naïve fish hosts. If there is a delay in the reporting of a suspected or confirmed outbreak; including the stubborn refusal by CFIA to release co-ordinates –many of those infected hosts die and are unavailable for sampling. This should be OBVIOUS to anyone – especially to our "experts" in CFIA,

7/ Without being able to test native stocks ASAP – we loose the opportunity to develop an understanding of the epidemiology of the disease and how it is transferred to/from the wild/cultured stocks. We loose the opportunity to develop those risk assessment models – and mitigate the risk,

8/ CFIA is only but one authority within a disease-testing program, and there are many other authorities and newly developing methodologies such as Kristi Millers.

These are the points you seem to have missed.

 

[steelmadness]

Land based agriculture is as porous as open net pens. Airborne disease travels from a dairy/beef as easily as waterborne disease from a net pen. Most infectious cattle disease is spread in manure....which is turn is spread directly onto the land. A mid/large farm would spread over a 100,000 liters a year....seperation, yeah right ! A chicken farm isn't under a dome..a flock of starlings, pigeon, crows etc are all regular visitors, infected bird manure travels through workers boots/clothing, grain, airborne once dry and turned into secondary dust, machinery etc. Your salmon, ham, steaks, burgers, bacon, wings etc. Are all produced in a very similar way. If you make one industry accountable, you must make them all. Something tells me the environmental groups don't have any real interest in taking on the Canadian Cattlemen's Association....get themselves squashed

 

[agentaqua]

Land based agriculture is as porous as open net pens. Airborne disease travels from a dairy/beef as easily as waterborne disease from a net pen. Most infectious cattle disease is spread in manure....which is turn is spread directly onto the land. If you make one industry accountable, you must make them all. Something tells me the environmental groups don't have any real interest in taking on the Canadian Cattlemen's Association....get themselves squashed

It's always interesting hearing what the extreme right are telling themselves in Alberta. Also interesting how we went from disease reporting on fish farms (or lack thereof) to hear how those nasty ENGOs (who apparently run EC) are "scared" of the Cattlemen - which is why (presumably) you appear to be stating that nobody has ever gotten charged under release of a deleterious substance - rather than the Harper government cutting and slashing enforcement offices and revamping laws under numerous undemocratic omnibus bills.

I am sure you will let me know if I am misreading your assumptions implicit within your post.

I won't comment on the specifics of the power the cattleman's association has - because I don't know - and yes I think it is incongruous that other releases of faecal coliform/manure/sewerage by municipalities has sometimes resulted in charges being laid section 36(3) of the Fisheries Act or CEPA, 1999 - but cattle producers have rarely been charged under this legislation (looks like only pigs and dairy farmers have been charged so far).

It may also be a result of many overlapping jurisdictions and legislation - provincially and federally. We have both Federal and Provincial Departments of Agriculture, and Environment, as well as both EC, DFO, CFIA, Health Canada, etc. - each with their primary and secondary legislation they enforce. In the following link: http://envirolaw.com/wp-content/upl...m=syndication&utm_campaign=inter-article-link they state that in Ontario agricultural producers are subject to a "Nutrient Management Plan under their Provincial "Farming and Food Production Protection Act" that protects “normal farm practices” from liability in nuisance (s. 2(1)). Maybe this has never been tested in court, yet - and the few EC inspectors have enough on their plates - so they don't engage with these producers over section 36(3) of the Fisheries Act or CEPA, 1999 . Your guess is likely better than mine.

In addition, and as a comparison - DFO no longer looks at forestry operations, either. I doubt if that had anything to do with those terrible enviros.

Your comments on both manure application and lack of understanding of our commercial food supply system are well taken.

I would point out that - in theory - there are similarities in release and lack of control of aerial verses aquatic pathogens - as you pointed out.

However, many pathogens from cattle are also transported in the run-off, hide in the soil for years; and that - water is many times denser than air. Fresh water weighs 1000kg/m3, salt water weighs 1027 -1033 kg/m3; while air is only 1.225 kg/m3 at sea level and at 15 °C - 1000 times less dense. In other words - water has the ability to float and transport much larger, and heavier disease and parasite vectors as passive particles.

That affects how and what types of propagules can be transported - as does temperature, oxygen levels, pH, and other factors.

In addition, tidal waters have many complex transport mechanisms such as tidal flushing, freshwater surface run-off, estuarine dynamics, and numerous long-shore seasonal currents that make long term transport of certain infective vectors possible - in the range of dozens of kilometers.

Then there is the susceptibility by species and life history stages that comes into play. Naïve juvenile salmon are quite susceptible to many disease and parasite vectors - especially when migrating out of channels past numerous fish farms.

Bison don't normally migrate through cattle farms with fences - but comparing risks between terrestrial cattle and aquatic farms - in this case - bison would be flying through cattle herds when comparing equitable levels of risks of fish farms - to their terrestrial equivalents.

 

[GLG]

Land based agriculture is as porous as open net pens. Airborne disease travels from a dairy/beef as easily as waterborne disease from a net pen. Most infectious cattle disease is spread in manure....which is turn is spread directly onto the land. A mid/large farm would spread over a 100,000 liters a year....seperation, yeah right ! A chicken farm isn't under a dome..a flock of starlings, pigeon, crows etc are all regular visitors, infected bird manure travels through workers boots/clothing, grain, airborne once dry and turned into secondary dust, machinery etc. Your salmon, ham, steaks, burgers, bacon, wings etc. Are all produced in a very similar way. If you make one industry accountable, you must make them all. Something tells me the environmental groups don't have any real interest in taking on the Canadian Cattlemen's Association....get themselves squashed

Are you seriously trying to tell us that the chicken industry would tolerate wild birds inside their barns like the salmon farms tolerate wild fish inside their nets? We all know that wild fish inside of net pens is a problem that this industry would not like us to talk about. The problem is that they can't hide it anymore. The courts have spoken on that matter.
Here is the DFO website that these reports are no listed.
http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/aquaculture/reporting-rapports/incidental-accidentel-eng.html

This one report is what I find troubling. I have highlighted in red and many of us have not forgotten.
http://www.pac.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/aquacu...ocs/incidental-accidentel/2012-Q2-T2-eng.html

Licence Number	Licence Holder	Site Common Name	DFO Pacific Fishery Management Area	Species Caught	Total Incidental Catch
AQFF 1899	Creative Salmon Ltd	Warne Island	24	Bullhead	Leptocottus Armatus	27
Pacific Pilchard	Sardinops Sagax	2
Herring	Clupea palalasii	29
Striped Surf Perch	Embiotoca lateralis	1
AQFF 1738	Greig Seafood BC Ltd	Atrevida	25	Rock Cod	Sebastes spp.	1
AQFF 137	Greig Seafood BC Ltd	Conville Bay	13	Pink Salmon	Oncorhynchus gorbuscha	1
AQFF 1705	Greig Seafood BC Ltd	Williamson	25	Herring	Clupea pallasi	1
AQFF 227	Mainstream Canada	Bawden	24	China Rockfish	Sebastes nebulosus	1
Sculpin	Superfamily Cottoidea	6
AQFF 819	Mainstream Canada	Cecil Island	12	Herring	Clupea pallasii	276
AQFF 227	Mainstream Canada	Dixon	24	Herring	Clupea pallasii	2.5 metric tonnes*
AQFF 819	Mainstream Canada	Mussel	12	China Rockfish	Sebastes nebulosus	2
Herring	Clupea pallasii	125
Sculpin	Superfamily Cottoidea	3
AQFF 1507	Mainstream Canada	Westside	24	Herring	Clupea pallasii	4,003
Pacific Cod	Gadus macrocephalus	68
Sculpin	Clupea pallasii	13
AQFF 1300	Marine Harvest Canada Inc.	Althorpe	13	Herring	Clupea pallasii	69
Pacific Tomcod	Gadus californicus	34
AQFF 388	Marine Harvest Canada Inc.	Brougham Point	13	Herring	Clupea pallasii	755
Sablefish	Anoplopoma fimbria	43
AQFF 821	Marine Harvest Canada Inc.	Glacier Falls	12	Perch	Perca Spp.	5
AQFF 378	Marine Harvest Canada Inc.	Thurlow	13	Herring	Clupea pallasii	16
Perch	Perca Spp.	44
	Sablefish Canada Ltd.		24	Spiny Dogfish	Squalus acanthis	7**
Red-Banded Rockfish	Sebastes babcocki	1**
*The incidental catch of herring at this facility occurred during a planned depopulation to control the spread of Infectious Haematopoietic Necrosis virus (IHNv).
**This incidental catch is associated with wild sablefish broodstock collection and is not from an individual farm site.

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[steelmadness]

You think you can keep roosting pigeons and starlings out of a barn ? And the farm yard itself ? Except for the one incident marked, the numbers are actually laugh out loud, a few thousand fish from a multitude of species. .This is a non issue that's not even pursued anymore, just like escaping Atlantic's spawning...neither is worth the time talking about.

 

[Birdsnest]

This link show the text book tactics from the queen bee of anti salmon farming. Cant say things are much different here.

http://salmonfarmscience.com/2012/06/26/mortons-latest-error-dishonesty-or-ignorance/

"Ms. Morton’s “bug hunt” is silly, bad science and she continues to make error after error, and tenuous connection after tenuous connection in her crusade against salmon farms. There is no science here; she is using cherry-picked pieces of data and information to attack salmon farming, working backwards from her conclusion which she apparently formed long ago."

 

[agentaqua]

This is a non issue that's not even pursued anymore, just like escaping Atlantic's spawning...neither is worth the time talking about.

I would agree that escaped Atlantic salmon is less of a concern in BC since they cannot interbreed with the local salmon stocks. Very much NOT so in the Atlantic.

Introgression or genetic pollution is but ONE issue, however.

There are many, many more issues wrt open net-cage technology.

It kinda seems you are avoiding acknowledging the points about disease transfer in my last couple of postings.

 

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