Fish Farm Diseases: First Nations May Demand Control over Wild and Farmed Salmon Testing

The fish farm disease hearings were initiated by Justice Cohen as a standalone session in his Commission into missing Fraser sockeye. He had concluded hearings but initiated a whole third section because he received evidence that made him conclude disease needed to be examined.

While many scientists had recorded ISA and other diseases, it was the Kibenge report that showed so wide spread ISA that he had to reopen the hearings. DFO submerged Cohen with several hundred thousand documents, but failed to include the Kibenge report with its damning evidence, belatedly, on the grounds all findings were false positives.

Cohen and the BC public didn't buy it. When his 1200 page tome came out the third section was largely about fish farm diseases and some 20 of the 75 recommendations were, too. The most important was that the government of Canada cancel the conflict of interest with fish farms that DFO has, and to just get on with saving wild Pacific salmon. He also said to move fish farms out of the water of salmon migration routes, particularly near Quadra Island.

Cohen:

“I therefore conclude that the potential harm posed to Fraser River sockeye from salmon farms is serious or irreversible. Disease transfer occurs between wild and farmed fish, and I am satisfied that salmon farms along the sockeye migration route have the potential to introduce exotic diseases and to exacerbate endemic diseases that could have a negative impact on Fraser River sockeye.” 

Justice Bruce Cohen

For background, see: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2016/05/briefing-significance-to-first-nations-dfo-announces-new-farmed-salmon-disease-may-23-2016-lawsuit-that-triggered-th.html#sthash.uhYPLulf.dpuf.

You will recall that DFO just recently, after the new Liberal government received 16,000 letters from BC voters calling for the appeal by Marine Harvest and DFO, to overturn the 2015 decicision banning fish farms from putting diseased fish in its fish farms, asked for an adjournment to study new evidence. See: http://www.leadnow.ca/wild-salmon/.

That evidence was that Dr. Kristi Miller has discovered PRV the presumed causative virus of HSMI, in a fish farm in Johnstone Strait. 

First Nations, fearing for their wild salmon resource, the major environmental factor in the proliferation of FNs in BC - one third of all FNs in all of Canada, may just declare it wants control over salmon. Here are the issues:

Potential Response

1. First Nations demand emergency authority to oversee immediate sampling of farmed salmon for piscine reovirus throughout B.C. and require a bill of health for all farmed salmon before transfer into or through their territory.
2. DFO must halt issuance of the long-term federal licences due to be granted to each farm beginning in the next few weeks, because piscine reovirus is so contagious.
3. DFO must drop the appeal and not engage in reinstating the industry’s legal right to transfer diseased farmed salmon into ocean net pens.
4. Assess whether the salmon farming industry in B.C. is capable of farming without contaminating regions around the pens with piscine reovirus and other pathogens and sea lice.

Potential Response

1. First Nations demand emergency authority to oversee immediate sampling of farmed salmon for piscine reovirus throughout B.C. and require a bill of health for all farmed salmon before transfer into or through their territory.
2. DFO must halt issuance of the long-term federal licences due to be granted to each farm beginning in the next few weeks, because piscine reovirus is so contagious.
3. DFO must drop the appeal and not engage in reinstating the industry’s legal right to transfer diseased farmed salmon into ocean net pens.
4. Assess whether the salmon farming industry in B.C. is capable of farming without contaminating regions around the pens with piscine reovirus and other pathogens and sea lice.

- See more at: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2016/05/briefing-significance-to-first-nations-dfo-announces-new-farmed-salmon-disease-may-23-2016-lawsuit-that-triggered-th.html#sthash.uhYPLulf.dpuf

“I therefore conclude that the potential harm posed to Fraser River sockeye from salmon farms is serious or irreversible. Disease transfer occurs between wild and farmed fish, and I am satisfied that salmon farms along the sockeye migration route have the potential to introduce exotic diseases and to exacerbate endemic diseases that could have a negative impact on Fraser River sockeye.”
Justice Bruce Cohen
- See more at: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2016/05/briefing-significance-to-first-nations-dfo-announces-new-farmed-salmon-disease-may-23-2016-lawsuit-that-triggered-th.html#sthash.uhYPLulf.dpuf

“I therefore conclude that the potential harm posed to Fraser River sockeye from salmon farms is serious or irreversible. Disease transfer occurs between wild and farmed fish, and I am satisfied that salmon farms along the sockeye migration route have the potential to introduce exotic diseases and to exacerbate endemic diseases that could have a negative impact on Fraser River sockeye.”
Justice Bruce Cohen
- See more at: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2016/05/briefing-significance-to-first-nations-dfo-announces-new-farmed-salmon-disease-may-23-2016-lawsuit-that-triggered-th.html#sthash.uhYPLulf.dpuf