From a CBC report: An aquaculture company hopes the Canadian Food Inspection Agency will allow it to harvest and sell farmed salmon that the agency ordered be destroyed, according to an industry source.
The CFIA ordered the Gray Aqua Group's aquaculture facility in Butter Cove on Newfoundland's south coast to destroy 450,000 fish after it confirmed some of them are infected with infectious salmon anemia — a disease that kills fish but that the agency says is harmless to humans.
The entire stock was worth about $10 million, and about half the fish were ready to go to market when the CFIA ordered them destroyed on July 6.
A CFIA spokesman told SCT in February that, under the right circumstances, Cooke Aquaculture would have been able to sell the 700,000 fish destroyed in Shelburne Harbour in the consumer marketplace.
Comments
Which agency proved that this disease does not affect humans? I would like to see the report. We sometimes too easily accept assurances from industry sources without demanding hard data provided by scientists who do not have their hands in the corporate cookie jar (and can we even accept data from government labs under the current Con regime?). Let’s see some data that irrefutably prove that this disease cannot possibly affect humans. Further, let’s see some hard data from independent studies proving that this disease has absolutely no effect on lobsters or other species of fishes. What are the vectors of this disease? Is it ONLY a direct fish-to-fish disease? How does fish A transmit it to fish B? Can the disease live outside the host? Can contact with feces affect other species of fishes? Where can we see an independent study of the possibility of cross-species contamination? How can the disease be prevented? Which chemicals are used to control it, and how do those affect nearby fishes? Where are the sick fish now? Are they in the general population with other fish? If the sick fish are permitted to be put up for sale, will they be advertised as fish that were slaughtered because they were sick, or will consumers just not be told that they are buying diseased fish?
What sorts of data are being transmitted to which authorities about these outbreaks? As we know, diseases morph and new strains appear. Ongoing monitoring and accumulation/analyses of data are important if this industry is to go viral in Nova Scotia. The parameters of the current models may very well have to change as our oceans become more acidic and the coastal water temperature continues to rise. We, the collective stewards of our oceans and fisheries, must ensure that those who own aquaculture businesses are adapting to environmental changes. We must ask the questions and demand authoritative data. For example, one question I would like to ask is whether farmed fishes in warmer waters suffer from diseases that we do not see here but could very well see with a rise in coastal water temperature?
I wonder whether Newfoundland does not reimburse the company for dead fish. Perhaps it does not waste taxpayers' money as Nova Scotia does. Perhaps that is why the company wants to sell the fish. Why are Nova Scotia taxpayers paying for dead fish? Do we pay Christmas tree farmers for dead trees? Do we buy a cow that dies on the farm? Whatever happened to the concept of taking a financial risk when starting a business? Why is our government acting as a private insurer?
The above questions are, I believe, important ones that need to be answered now that the governments are approving open water pens for aquaculture. Most of us WANT to believe that this aquaculture model is safe and sustainable, especially since our taxpayers’ dollars are being spent to get the ball rolling. Many of us fear that not enough is known – or is known but not revealed to us – about the hazards of this model. Although we want to see this work so that we can keep our young people employed at home, we do not want to see existing fisheries threatened, and we do not want to see our harbours become polluted with salmon waste. In years gone by, we could perhaps wait it out and deal with any problems after they occurred. Now, however, with so many components of our environment at the tipping point, we cannot afford that luxury. We cannot afford to experiment first and adjust the model based on the results. We have to know going in that any hazards are under complete control and that what we have now – relatively clean coastal waters and assorted fisheries that put food on the table for our families – will not fall victim to a new venture. If this is a safe model, the public should be privy to information about everything from whether floating salmon food is picked up by lobsters and other fish species to independent studies of the effect of the chemicals used to treat the salmon. Rather than cutting DFO jobs, the feds should be paying an officer to accompany any vessel that, at any time, steams out to the fish pens. That officer should ensure that all steps outlined in agreements are followed to the letter. The cost of employing that officer would seem to be a small price to pay to ensure that this open-ecosystem venture will not bring our little area of the globe to its knees because someone decides to use a non-approved pesticide in the pens.
Dear previous commentator.
A scientific study titled "Assessment of Zoonotic Risk from Infectious Salmon Aneamia Virus, commissioned by the European Commision: Health and Consumer Protection Directorate-General (2000) stated the following: "Only one species, Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar L.) is known to be susceptible (to ISA) under natural conditions"; and, "there is no reason to regard ISA as a zoonosis, and there is no evidence for risk to man." In short, it has been tested, ISA is not harmful to people or lobsters.
Second, the province of Nova Scotia does not compensate Operators for the destruction of ISA infected fish. Compensation is provided by the Federal Government through the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Given your lack of knowledge in regards to these two facts, I can only assume your other statements are equally "well" informed.
Compensation is provided by the Federal Government through the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
This is what bothers us tax payers
Dear Shelburne Parent,
Thank you for your comments. You will, however, note that I asked questions. I did not offer statements of fact. If I were “well-informed” about aquaculture, I would be able to take an informed position. I am not, and I do not. I simply feel that we should ensure that we have all of the information before we embrace something that is still very controversial.
Here are a few of the facts I researched that led me to be concerned about the aquaculture venture:
Infectious Salmon Anaemia appears in trout, so we know that it is not limited to salmon. We also know that viruses jump species. If viruses could not jump from one species to another, the science of zoonotic disease surveillance would not exist.
ISA can be reproduced and transmitted by the sea louse. A concentration of salmon in a pen is going to result in a concentration of sea lice. If a sea louse is motile, it becomes a vector for the virus.
Penned salmon can escape (damage to the pens, storms) and mix with other species that, if susceptible to the virus, would have no immunity to it.
In this report, OAA Technical Memorandum NMFS-NWFSC-49 - The Net-pen Salmon - Farming Industry in the Pacific Northwest (2001), the following is presented: The issues of most concern are:
1. The impact of bio-deposits (fish feces and uneaten feed) from farm operations on the environment beneath the net-pens.
2. The impact on benthic communities by the accumulation of heavy metals in the sediments below the net-pens.
3. The impact on non-target organisms by the use of therapeutic compounds (both pharmaceuticals and pesticides) at net-pen farms.
A good portal that presents information from Canadian/American working groups can be found here: http://wwf.worldwildlife.org/site/PageNavigator/SalmonSOIForm
The hazards associated with aquaculture are still being studied, and the guidelines for mariculture industries continue to evolve with the ongoing analysis of an increasing corpus of evidence-based data.
I am among the many who hope that aquaculture will become a viable enterprise for this area. I hope that salmon farming and shipbuilding will slow the migration of our youth to the west. However, I feel that we must remain on our toes and not assume that the information we are fed is always ‘transparent’ (http://halifax.mediacoop.ca/story/pooping-bed/11552).
Thank you for clarifying that compensation is a federal issue.
Federal = Provincial = Local
It is all tax money paid to the salmon farmer
At least someone is looking at the salmon and someone is looking out for something wrong. In this case a fish virus
http://ht.ly/cgLaM
Very concerning interviews about what is left under an aquaculture pen.