Dear: Minister Ashfield,
OIE Director General Vallat,
BC Minister of Agriculture Don McRae
Cornelius Kiley, Director of CFIA Aquatic Animal Health
I am writing to ask what action was taken as a result of the DFO diagnoses of ISA virus on two Creative Salmon farms in Clayoquot Sound in 2011? I have attached the DFO database released by the lab to the Cohen Commission.
Download Exh 2053 – 136a. Creative Salmon ISA Test Results.xls (39.5K)
Attached also is a memo from the BC provincial vet, who does not refute the PCR results, only the association with the jaundice condition.
Download Exh 2078 – 22-JaundiceSyndromeNotISAV copy.pdf (77.2K)
What follow up has the CFIA, DFO and the Province of BC done on these cases?
Attached is a press release noting that Canada is giving the OIE $2 million, so I consider that an endorsement by Canada of the OIE standards.
Download Canada OIE.png (406.5K)
I am also writing to inquire why the OIE has not listed any of the ISAv positive results from the OIE reference lab or these cases on the WAHID site as at least a “suspect” case? I also don’t see the Nova Scotia outbreak listed so perhaps the website is no longer used?
Download OIE ISA1.pdf (298.8K)
Thank you and I look forward to your response,
Alexandra Morton
Comments
7 responses to “ISA in Clayoquot – what is government’s response?”
Ms Morton perhaps there are no cases of ISA in BC listed on the OIE site because there are none. Perhaps it is time you accepted that fact and stopped making a fool of yourself by endless claims of you having found yet another area with ISA. Dr. Kibenge states on the Atlantic Veterinary University website what the tests involve and the fact some ISA sequence is discovered doesn’t prove there is ISA . Perhaps you best pay more attention to facts and less attention to your personal bias. Bad science is just that . bad science and you continue to demonstrate that repeatedly.
Amanda makes an interesting point.
However, her assertion does not equate with the testimony at the Cohen Commission. Perhaps Amanda can tell us poor taxpayers why she is correct and the sworn testimony wrong.
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Helmsdale : The OIE lab site lists NO confirmed ISA for Canada in 2011. Perhaps the lab knows more than you and Morton since this is in fact the lab that does the testing and also did Morton’s tests. Perhaps you heard what you wanted to hear at the Cohen Enquiry and not what was actually said. There is NO ISA in BC salmon
Amanda:
First of all, let’s get your facts straight: Dr. Kibenge is the OIE Expert with the OIE Reference Laboratory for ISA at the Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC), of the University of PEI (UPEI) — not the “Atlantic Veterinary University”, as you had stated — but I digress.
In spite of heavy political pressure and threats, Dr. Kibenge, in sworn testimony during the Cohen Commission hearings, categorically stated that he had detected positive traces of ISA virus in several samples of wild BC salmon; the precautionary principle, in any case, should prevail.
The OIE Reference Laboratory apparently has not reported the positive ISA test results due to intense political pressure from government and corporate industrial interests, which intend to obscure facts, and perpetuate the operations of the foreign-national fish-farming conglomerates — and, in effect, continue their wanton destruction of ecologies by the same source, as they have throughout the world.
The global pattern of ISA virus contamination and destruction is blatantly obvious to anyone who bothers to observe — the many localities include Norway, Scotland, Chile, the USA, and eastern Canada.
From 1996 to 2007 in southwest New Brunswick, ISA virus epidemics have severely crippled the aquaculture industry, requiring the slaughter and industrial disposal of millions of farmed salmon. By 1997, there were 21 farm sites testing positive for ISA, and more than 35 farm sites in 1998. In 2003 alone, 2.7 million fish were wiped out as a result of ISA epidemics. The last case in NB requiring “depopulation” was 2007, with 528,000 fish destroyed.
These statistics do not even include the collateral damage to wild Atlantic salmon and trout stocks, whose populations have since have been decimated.
These obviously do not address the inevitable transference of this highly contagious retrovirus to west coast aquaculture, and its eventual crossover, as currently affecting and devastating Pacific salmon stocks (are you listening, Chinook sports fishers?) — which they clearly have, based in part on the results of heavily suppressed local studies, despite the best efforts of the DFO and the government to muzzle and deny the evidence of their own scientists (including Dr. Kristina Miller* and Dr. Molly Kibenge).**
Continuation of these government mandates will destroy Pacific wild salmon surely as they had the wild cod of the North Atlantic.
And as to you, Amanda, your bitterness, and veiled and misinforming statements reveal your pointed agenda; you keep belabouring the same contentious points without addressing the issues at hand.
Please, don’t further aid those soulless corporate entities (to whom you are apparently enthralled) in destroying our natural world simply to fulfill their short-term, quarterly-based objectives of greed and avarice.
*Dr. Miller had since conducted testing of farmed salmon with the cooperation of the company, Creative Salmon, in allowing testing of their fish, and 25% were indicated as positive for ISAv.
**During the Cohen Commission Inquiry, despite having been instructed to produce ALL evidence on the health of the Fraser sockeye, a DFO study which had found 100% of the highly endangered Cultus Lake sockeye of the Fraser River testing positive for ISA virus in 2002 and 2003, was never revealed by the DFO — and even now it maintains the position that ISAv is not here.
DFO will go down as the only Federal Government Department in Canadian history who managed THEIR MANDATE into EXTINCTION!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SO: Are you proud of all the Window Dressing/PR war wins girls & guys??????????
Look YOUR CHILDREN in the eye, and explain it to THEM!!!!!!!
EXTINCTION IS FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Selective use of biosecurity.
Whether we like it or not, farmed Atlantic salmon and wild Pacific salmon are elements of a co-existing ecosystem in British Columbia. For both elements, fish health and welfare are key elements of a sustainability strategy.
Which is why is it strange that the various regulators that oversee both ecosystem elements have no clear, defensible precautionary strategy when indicia of fish disease appear.
Where is the public interest?
It is almost as if the Canadian Food Inspection Agency waited until an avian influenza outbreak was noted on an OIE website before it took any action.
For what it is worth, the CFIA gave the impression of a prudent precautionary regulator when there was an avian influenza outbreak in Abbotsford in recent years – quarantine, culling, strict biosecurity.
Yet when it comes to farmed and wild salmon, the elements of a good biosecurity policy all seem to be missing.
I am merely an interested bystander who cannot understand the selective use (or non-use) of biosecurity as a regulatory policy.
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I take very seriously any testimony sworn under oath – whether it is a construction dispute or a fish disease. Expert witnesses are entitled to tender opinion evidence and in view of the background of the experts, I do not disregard their evidence lightly.
We have Justice Cohen to navigate among the competing opinions.
But as an interested bystander, I would take the indicia of ISAV very seriously, regardless of the attempts to muzzle a free exchange of science facts.
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