Nylund, Vike - The Famous ISA Chile Paper, Scientists Harassed in Norway, AquaGen, Updated July 14, 2017

Siri Vike was sent by her company, Cermaq, to Chile to find out what the fish were dying with in 2007. The result was this paper with Are Nylund, a now very famous one, in 2009: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19034606. (See the Vike/Nylund harassment link closer to the bottom below, a 2017 article).

It came out that AquaGen had sent the infected eggs to Chile that lead to a $2billion loss in 2008 and 13,000 workers losing their jobs. The irony is that had AquaGen not filed a 'bad science'  complaint, no one would have known that they were the firm that caused the problem - because there were half a dozen. Even today, AquaGen claims they have never had an infection in their 45 year history, a false statement (there is one quote below). Much like Donald Trump, fish farm companies make false statements about their actions even though they know they are false.

Here is the abstract:

Abstract

Infectious salmon anaemia virus (ISAV), genus Isavirus (family Orthomyxoviridae), is present in all large salmon (Salmo salar)-producing countries around the North Atlantic. The target species for this virus are members of the genus Salmo, but the virus may also replicate in other salmonids introduced to the North Atlantic (Oncorhychus spp.). Existing ISA virus isolates can be divided into two major genotypes, a North American (NA) and a European (EU) genotype, based on phylogenetic analysis of the genome. The EU genotype can be subdivided into several highly supported clades based on analysis of segments 5 (fusion protein gene) and 6 (hemagglutinin-esterase gene). In 1999 an ISA virus belonging to the NA genotype was isolated from Coho salmon in Chile, and in 2007 the first outbreaks of ISA in farmed Atlantic salmon was observed. Several salmon farms in Chile were affected by the disease in 2007, and even more farms in 2008. In this study, ISA virus has been isolated from salmon in a marine farm suffering an outbreak of the disease in 2008 and from smolts with no signs of ISA in a fresh water lake. Sequencing of the partial genome of these ISA viruses, followed by phylogenetic analysis including genome sequences from members of the NA and EU genotypes, showed that the Chilean ISA virus belongs to the EU genotype. The Chilean ISA virus groups in a clade with exclusively Norwegian ISA viruses, where one of these isolates was obtained from a Norwegian brood stock population. All salmonid species in the southern hemisphere have been introduced from Europe and North America. The absence of natural hosts for ISA viruses in Chile excludes the possibility of natural reservoirs in this country, and the close relationship between contemporary ISA virus strains from farmed Atlantic salmon in Chile and Norway suggest a recent transmission from Norway to Chile. Norway export large amounts of Atlantic salmon embryos every year to Chile; hence, the best explanation for the Norwegian ISA virus in Chile is transmission via these embryos, i.e. vertical or transgenerational transmission. This supports other studies showing that the ISA virus can be transmitted vertically.

***

Vertical transmission was very debatable at the time, with horizontalists being in the majority, as in fish to fish, versus verticalists, as in doe/buck to egg. Not anymore.

Go read this article to get the slimy details on how scientists are harassed in Norway, when fish farms don't like their findings: https://morgenbladet.no/aktuelt/2017/06/de-forbannede-lakseforskerne.

I have also done a post on the subject: https://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2017/06/scientists-harassed-by-fish-farms.html.  There must be 20 scientists in this one who have been harassed by business, and, if you can believe it, the Norwegian government.

This is the story on the Vike/Nylund harassment in the Norwegian press, 2017. See: https://morgenbladet.no/aktuelt/2017/06/et-forskermareritt?utm_source=M%C3%B8rke+motkrefter&utm_campaign=cf9d10687b-M%C3%98RKE_MOTKREFTER_2_2017_06_16&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0eba175513-cf9d10687b-57212337. 

You can translate it at Google Translate: https://translate.google.ca/.

You will note that from the Canadian expert, Fred Kibenge, AquaGen had an unsigned copy of issues. The great irony here is that after the Cohen Commission in Canada where the Canadian Food Inspection Agency did not like Kibenge's testimony against fish farms it interceded with the World Animal Health Organization (OIE) to have Kibenge lose his accreditation. One of the letters is on the public record and can be found on the Canadian Auditor General's site in an Environmental Petition.

From AquGen in 2017, its CEO, Nina Santi's speaking on the case at a Norwegian conference, with Vike in attendance said this: that she had followed the presentations with increasing irritation. "Many people have opinions without knowing," she said about the infection issue, emphasizing that "Aquagen has not had any ILA outbreak since the 1970s." 

This is a false staement. AquaGen sent ISA [ILA in Norwegian] to Chile.

Here is a final quote from the article (note that it is Google Translate English):

"After ten years, there has still been no alternative explanation of how the virus came to the country.
Chile no longer imports roe from Norway. The country's ILA infection is minimized, as is the case in Canada, Scotland and the Faroe Islands."

Note that this says Canada downplays the ISA in Canada. If you follow this news, the CFIA allowed one eastcoast ISA infection to be slaughtered and sold to Canadians, thus washing ISA down drains and into rivers and oceans all over the country. They did this because it would not be allowed into the USA with ISA, and to avoid paying as much as $30 for each diseased, dead fish, the CFIA decided it didn't matter that hundreds of thousands of Canadians kitchens would be affected.

Furthermore, DFO, the CFIA and the BC testing system, BCMAL, all refuse to believe there is ISA in BC, even though there was a 2016 article in Virology, and Virology dismissed their complaints. This means that two levels of government are saying ISA does not exist in Canada. Tragic.

"In Norway there were 15 ILA [ISA] outbreaks in 2015 and 12 last year [2016]. This is more than in any other country in the world. Recently, a new outbreak was reported at Lingalaks in the Hardanger Fjord, where 170,000 salmon were slaughtered."

Now, another news article:  http://ilaks.no/ila-mistanke-hos-aquagen-tingvoll/. AquaGen now has ISA, in 2017, despite claiming once again that it has never had ISA in its 45 year history, which of course, is a further falsehood, as the Vike/Nylund paper on AquaGen taking ISA to Chile for the 2008 ISA collapse in that country confirms.