News of Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) had recently rocked the North American seafood
Unaccountable Activism?
industry. It turns out that activists from a left-wing university in British Columbia, apparently not known for their scientific thoroughness nor public relations smarts, were a little hasty in their announcement that they had “confirmed” the presence of the ISA virus in Pacific salmon.
Canadian authorities have now followed up, retested the original samples and confirmed no presence of the fish virus.
“Our government takes the health of our fisheries very seriously. We have taken appropriate and immediate action to follow up on the allegations of the presence of ISA in BC waters. We can now confirm that, preliminary analysis, using proper and internationally recognized procedures, has found that none of the samples has tested positive for ISA. In recent years, over 5000 fresh, properly stored and processed salmon have been tested by the BC government and Fisheries and Oceans Canada and there has never been a confirmed case of ISA in British Columbia salmon. An active, science-based sampling program continues for both farmed and wild salmon.”
- Fisheries and Oceans Canada Minister Keith Ashfield“Reckless allegations based on incomplete science can be devastating to these communities and unfair to the families that make a living from the sea.”
-BC Minister of Agriculture Don McRaeYeah, reckless allegations with no accountability. Oh, how easy it is to be an activist.
Any apology forthcoming from SFU? I hope BCSFA, DFO, Province and others have asked for an explanation of their poor science.
Dont forget it was the same DFO (Canada) that decimated the East Coast Cod stocks, one of the 9 greatest fisheries in the world. The folks that did the first tests are reputable and world class.
This story is NOT over, The Norwegians have spread this disease all over the globe. Its just a matter of time.
They could only confirm ISA in one of the tests the second time round, so of course that doesn’t count, because by this time they’ve used up all the viable samples or the samples have degraded to the point where they couldn’t repeat it a third time. I’ve never heard of a false positive due to a degraded sample in a PCR test.
Chances are far more likely that ISA exists on the west coast now, is slightly genetically different than the strains detected in europe, since it’s had a chance to evolve since being introduced here by fish farms who knows how many years ago, and that the government testing has been specificically looking for a gene sequence from the europe strain that doesn’t exist in what’s found on the west coast. That or they have detected it in PCR tests, but have been unable to culture it in live cells, which is a difficult task at the best of times.
“get real”, thanks for your comments. We’re not sure why you would jump to making a statement such as “introduced by fish farms”? No scientist has concluded what they may have found (is it ISA, does it cause disease/mortality, is it transmittable?) and certainly not how something found may have been created. Furthermore, and many years prior to salmon farming on the West Coast, the US and Canadian governments stocked millions of Atlantic salmon into rivers on the West Coast of North America – for sport fishing. Salmon farming was certainly not the first to import Atlantic salmon, but when they did, they had to follow many import and health protocols that were not followed years prior.
TTAAS
If you’re really interested in what has been happening in BC , Google up the last 3 days of the Cohen Inquiry, The Cohen Inquiry’s mandate was to find out what happened to the Fraser River Sockeye in 2009. Cohen reconvened three extra days of expert testimony all of it on ISAv. Its a long read. Bottom line is its complicated. DFO Canada can not be trusted. CFIA might work well with chickens but has been unable to identify ISA, However 3 other accredited labs have found ISAv, one of which is the PBS (DFO) in Nanaimo where Dr Miller identified ISA years ago. Her work was suppressed by DFO. Do your diligence, they decide what the risks are. There is much at stake on all sides.
Hi Arctos2. From the information available regarding the hearings specific to ISA, the 3 labs you mention were not able to isolate nor culture a virus (ISA or ISAv) in BC salmon. All 3 labs admit they have not found ISA or ISAv, but have found fragments of DNA sequences that may be ISA, or may be something entirely different. You are correct; it’s complicated, and we should all be sure not to speculate and try to stick to facts.
We are wondering, why would you suggest that Canadian authorities “cannot be trusted”? We’re interested to hear your perspective on that.
TTAAS
Miller found that she MAY have isolated a signature of one segment of the gene from the family of flu-like viruses that ISA falls into. So what?! The one virulent strain of ISA that we know kills only Atlantic salmon and has been in the world for millenia.
We have 15 million Atlantics in BC, not dying. Year after year 98% survive to harvest. We test them for the ISA strain that kills Atlantic salmon and we do not find it there. 15 million IAS-susceptible fish per year are exposed to wild salmon are found negative for ISA. I would say that is a pretty good “test result” that the scary strain of ISA is NOT in BC. That result totally outweighs Miller’s theory that she MAY have found a sequence match of a gene that MAY possibly be part of the same family of viruses that ISA belongs to.