Today the 'Namgis lawyer, Sean Jones, was up. It seems that they have chosen a good lawyer.
DFO has taken the position that PRV does not cause disease in BC and that it is natural to BC.
Sean Jones, lawyer for Namgis, presented evidence that the Minister of Fisheries is acting in bad faith when it comes to permitting PRV-infected farm salmon to enter 'Namgis territory.
At the outset he made it clear that 'Namgis were in agreement with the 2015 Morton vs Canada ruling that all farm salmon should be screened for PRV and subjected to section 56 of the Fisheries General Regulations which prohibits fish infected with a disease agent from being transferred into Canadian waters.
This is the ruling that the Minister does not acknowlege.
Sean Jones walked the court through an unbelievable sequence of events wherein the BC government scientist in charge assessing farm salmon health audits found salmon with the heart-wasting disease, HSMI, back in 2008, but instead of reporting it, he discussed the finding with the salmon farming industry and together they decided it was not, HSMI. By international standards, all other countries would have called it HSMI. HSMI is caused by piscine orthoreovirus (PRV)
Download Marty May 21 2016 HSMI.pdf (380.5K)</a>
In 2011, DFO scientist, Dr. Kristi Miller (DFO) was contacted by Creative Salmon and asked if she could help them figure out why Chinook salmon in their farms in Tla-o-qui-aht territory, Tofino area, were turning yellow and dying. Dr. Miller found they were infected with PRV.
Sean Jones then provided evidence that the BC government veterinarian in charge of farm salmon health, advised Creative Salmon, not to allow her to publish this result.
This is explosive evidence because as DFO and the salmon farming industry were telling anyone who will listen that PRV does not cause disease in BC, they appear to have known and suppressed information showing otherwise! Seven years later Dr. Miller persisted and got the research published, showing that PRV is causing red blood cells in Chinook salmon to fill up with the virus and burst, en masse, causing jaundice and organ failure. Because this research was hidden, millions of infected farm salmon poured into pens throughout southern BC. The public were assured that PRV is so harmless government does not have to screen farm salmon for it.
The Minister of Fisheries is relying on his "PRV Policy" to explain why he doesn't require PRV screening of farm salmon. DFO claims that he reviewed this policy every time new work was published and got the same result every time. PRV is harmless, there is no need to test farm salmon for it.
In 2017, a team of international scientists led by DFO scientists diagnosed the disease HSMI in a BC salmon farm in Okisollo Channel in the Discovery Islands (DiCicco et al 2017). This was a problem because the Minister's PRV Policy relied on the belief that PRV does not cause the disease HSMI in BC, that somehow PRV is harmless to salmon in British Columbia.
However, instead of changing his Policy in response to this new finding and order screening of all farm salmon for PRV, the Minister moved the goal posts. Now he says PRV is not killing enough fish. He won't consider PRV a threat to wild salmon unless it kills an entire farm… PRV generally doesn't kill farm salmon, it only weakens them until they can barely move. A salmon in a farm can survive lying motionless for weeks in a pen surrounded by predator nets, but a wild salmon would be eaten quickly by a whale, eagle or sea lion.
Every time DFO is confronted with science and has the choice to err on the side of precaution, they choose to be reckless
There are scientists in DFO who are publishing research, sometimes with Marine Harvest, that suggests that PRV is natural and harmless in BC. Sean Jones brought up some of these papers.
One stated that they had "ruled out" that PRV could have been imported into BC. Jones pointed out that this paper had been "corrected," the authors had to admit publicly in the journal they had "overstated" this result, they had not ruled out introduction of PRV from another country such as Norway. (Siah et al 2016)
In another paper, DFO injected Chinook salmon with PRV and reported there was no sign of disease, no jaundice, no HSMI and so the Pacific coast strain of PRV is not harmful to Pacific salmon (Garver et al 2017).
However, when the lead author of this paper was examined by the 'Namgis legal team he admitted, that he did not examine the fish for disease in the time range that PRV is known to cause disease in other salmon. As well, 87% of the salmon injected with PRV had internal lesions that are considered a symptom of jaundice. None of the control fish that had not received the injection had these lesions.
So DFO was relying on a study, that claimed to show no impact of PRV on Chinook salmon, but in fact did show impact on Chinook salmon.
There was a lot more of this type of information revealed. Hopefully I can post the transcript in its entirety some day. A lot of the material covered was from Freedom of Information requests that I have made. It was good to hear this being brought to the attention of a judge, in front of 16 lawyers and members of the 'Namgis council.
Then the lawyer for Canada got up to address the judge.
He said:
The 'Namgis policy on PRV (that they want to keep infected fish out of their territory) is "unreasonable"
"DFO has the science and the monitoring down"
"The DFO management regime provides comfort – it is not a free-for-all there are rules…"
"PRV is not of concern"
“In 30 years we know there has been no outbreak of disease we are on top of it,”
We will hear more from Canada tomorrow…