ISA Breaks Out In Chile Again, Nov 3 - Updated Dec 2, 2011

After only coming out of an ISA outbreak that resulted in $2 billion in damage last year in 2010, Chile has 23 farms sequenced for ISA again (the mutations have resulted in 28 strains of ISA in Chile) and an outbreak has resulted in a farm having to destroy its farmed salmon.

See: http://www.fis.com/fis/worldnews/worldnews.asp?monthyear=&day=3&id=47307&l=e&special=&ndb=1%20target=

In BC, we have five positive ISA results in wild salmon of four of five species. The typical infection cycle starts as much as 10 years before a major infection breaks out. And ISA and other aquaculture diseases are cyclical over time.

The Association of Chilean Salmon Industry AG, which is the Chilean salmon farmers association, explained in a statement: "While this is the first case of the year 2011, we know that the ISA virus is not possible to eradicate so we must live with it and there will be new events in the future."

This suggests an eery possibility once DFO accepts that ISA is here. If I were refining a fish farm communications strategy, I would ask for protection from wild salmon on the grounds that ISA never goes away - and testing has shown 4,726 times that fish farms don't have ISA. Then I would explain that we have to learn to live with ISA because it can't be eradicated.

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Fish Farm Spin Cycle - Chile

Read the thread in this Chilean news on ISA: http://www.fis.com/fis/worldnews/worldnews.asp?monthyear=&day=2&id=48163&l=e&special=&ndb=1%20target.

You will find, when you read this article and follow the links below it, that the fish farm denied there was a problem, gave assurances that it was following the law, and in fact, surpassing them, then being caught failing to report a new ISA cycle. The next stage will be it saying it is introducing all the measures required and will be better and so on. This is a very common pattern with fish farms. In BC Marine Harvest has just plead guilty to several charges and thus making the story go away, though it had been protesting its innocence for two years. And Cooke Aquaculture on the east coast, saying for two years it was innocent of using an illegal drug, Cypermethrin, then once charges were brought is going to pay them. And so on.