Fish Farm Companies Make Taxpayer Money from Diseased Fish - Updated Nov 25, 2013

The article by me was first published by the Common Sense Canadian a week ago. It was responded to by Grant Wartkentin who works for Mainstream. His response is on their website. I stand by what I have said, and do not agree with his assessment of what the fish-site post says about Mainstream losing money when they had disease. As the supply of fish went down, prices rose in the US, but in BC fish farms, their sales to the USA will go down because their parent company, Cermaq Mainstream and the other Norwegian firms had a 26% tariff rescinded to the US market, and now the parent companies of BC fish farms will be out-competing their own corporations in BC.

Please note that Wartkentin did not object to my estimate that Mainstream received $35 Million of taxpayer dollars from the CFIA for their slaughtered, diseased fish. This leads me to suspect that they received even more than my $35 M estimate.

Fish Farms Get Rich on Our Money

You might think the multi-billion dollar fish farm industry was a licence to print money. You’d be almost right, but not for the reason you might think. Marine Harvest, Cermaq Mainstream and Grieg Seafood comprise 90% of BC’s farmed salmon industry and Marine Harvest operates in 22 countries. What you don’t know is that taxpayers, meaning you and me, pay big money to them when their fish get diseases and have to be slaughtered.

Once the Canadian Food Inspection Agency detects a reportable disease, it issues a slaughter order and the fish are destroyed. Then the CFIA sends a very large cheque to the fish farm. This taxpayer cheque compensates them for disposable items like infected nets, cost of transport and offloading, cost of sequestering diseased carcasses in perpetuity, and disinfecting all other items that came in contact with the fish, including the boat that transported them. In addition to all this, the commonly accepted extra payment for each fish is up to $30. This figure really comprises an average payment because of all the other costs mentioned.

You’d think they would have insurance for losses, but my conversations with a marine insurer tells me they have difficulty getting insurance because they lose so many ‘crops’ to – wait for it – disease. So why are we, the Canadian taxpayers, paying these foreign, multi-billion dollar corporations?

Fish farms like to say their fish get diseases from wild salmon because the latter don’t get sick, as if that’s a justification for cash. Not so. A recent PHD dissertation from Norway showed that the problem with farmed fish is that they are stressed (1) – the cages are overcrowded. This results in high output of the stress hormone cortisol and that weakens immune systems in farmed fish, thus they get disease. They actually change benign viruses into infectious killers.

How much product is lost to disease? One third to one half of all aquaculture products in the world are lost to disease every year, some $35 - $49 Billion (2). I started a Freedom of Information request to the CFIA and DFO to find out just how much we taxpayers in Canada pay to these billion dollar foreign corporations. I have been waiting 10 months now with no answer, so, let me give you a reasonable estimate.  

Overall, my expectation is that the cross-Canada disease total will come in at several hundred million taxpayer dollars over the past decade for BC, NS, NB and recently NL. Here in BC, Cermaq Mainstream’s Dixon Point and Millar Channel 2012 IHN slaughters would have paid them, in my estimate, about $35 Million of our cash. That’s so much money that it moved this boom/bust business into positive earnings before interest and taxes (i.e., EBIT), when it lost money the year before – and only made money this year because of having  disease.(3). They’ve had a decade of problems before (4).

See thefishsite.com, November 8, 2013:

Mainstream Canada reported an EBIT pre fair value and non-recurring items of NOK 43 million, an improvement from a loss of NOK 26 million the previous year, even though volumes sold declined from 5,600 tons to 4,400 tons. EBIT per kilo was 9.6 NOK. Good prices in the North American market and the IHN outbreak last year are the main factors behind the improved result. (5).

So Mainstream lost money when they didn’t have disease and made money when they did have disease – because you and I paid them. And they shipped far less fish, oh and a third farm, Bawden Point (8), posted a weak positive for IHN – but they were quickly harvested and sent to humans to eat. This should not be the case. Do complain, as I did, to Gail Shea, Minister of DFO, Min@dfo-mpo.gc.ca.

On another aquaculture front, you may be even more unhappy to know Shea announced $400 Million in gifts to the aquaculture sector in Canada last week(6).  That’s a lot of dead, diseased fish. I have asked her for $400 million be given to the commercial, sport and processing sectors in BC that provide 600% more in contribution to gross provincial product than fish farms. I’ll let you know.

And fish farms in BC have been losing money. Mainstream lost money in 2012(4). Marine Harvest has lost money in the last few years, too, largely due to Kudoa a fungal disease that cost them $12,000,000 in 2012 – and just prior, in 2011, things were so bad they laid off 60 employees – right before Christmas. Nice guys.

Kudoa results in myoliquifaction that makes farmed fish into mush. Would you buy salmon you had to put in a container with a spoon? Oh and then there is Grieg. They got IHN too, last year, in their Cullodon site in Sechelt. Fortunately we did not have to pay for that as well. Grieg is also the company that had to pay a fine of $100,000 for drowning 65 - 75 sea lions in their Skuna Bay nets in 2010 - they tarted up that site to sell to the unsuspecting in the USA as environmentally-sustainable, organic farmed salmon. Where is PETA when you need them?

Grieg has also been losing money (7):

“In Canada, the company cut losses, with a negative ebit [sic] before fair value adjustment of the biomass of NOK 2.71/kg, compared to a loss of NOK 8.22/kg in the same quarter of 2012.”

And the kicker? Cermaq is owned 59.2% by the government and thus the people of Norway. Why do we give another government our money for their killing our fish in our ocean rather than raising their fish on land in closed containers? This does not make sense.

Ask Shea for BC’s $400 million. We can spend it on habitat restoration, something DFO has been sadly remiss about in BC for decades. This year’s total DFO habitat projects for BC is a measly $900,000, only 2.6% of our own money Ottawa sent to diseased fish farms in BC.

dcreid@catchsalmonbc.com

 References:

11. Koestan Gadan PHd: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130102083557.htm.

22.   Kibenge document of fish farm diseases: http://www.oie.int/eng/A_aquatic/Docs/Presentations/1.11Kibenge.ppt.

33.  See: http://www.thefishsite.com/fishnews/21731/strong-salmon-market-drives-earnings-improvement-for-cermaq#sthash.x4EVcGXu.dpuf

44.    Cermaq’s other disease problems in Clayoquot Sound in the last decade: http://www.farmedanddangerous.org/solutions/industry-reform/about-the-industry/

55.    Mainstream did a write down of Dixon Bay for $4.5 Mil for biomass insurance purposes. Millar Channel is the other farm slaughtered.

66.    See The Fish Site - http://www.thefishsite.com/fishnews/21654/federal-400-million-fund-to-enhance-canadas-fishing-industry.

77.    Grieg: http://www.undercurrentnews.com/2013/11/01/grieg-plans-norway-growth-in-2014-as-weak-results-in-canada-continue/.

88.    Bawden Point: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/fish-farm-quarantined-after-virus-discovered-1.4434.

99.    And Cermaq/Mainstream lost money in Finnmark to disease, too: “The PD [pancreatic disease] outbreak in July had a negative EBIT impact of NOK 25 million for the Finnmark operation - See more at: 

Key Document - Land-Based Closed-Containment Fish Farm Science 2013, Updated Nov 3, 2013

International Summit on Farming Fish in Land-Based Closed-Containment Systems.

140 participants from 14 countries met in West Virginia in September, 2013 to share expertise on growing fish on land with recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS) for the sake of the sustainable fish production and food security. 

This is the Tides Canada weblink for the 50 plus presentations:  http://tidescanada.org/salmon/aquaculture-innovation-workshops-and-reports/.

This is a major collection of current science on closed containment from around the world and I suggest you go take a look at some of the presentations. This is a wonderful collection of papers, and is a credit to both Tides Canada for assembling all this work in one place on the web, and to the Save Our Salmon group for being involved.

This is the SOS link: http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/636112/842c3263a6/281374055/0f24f2d8f3/.

It is clear that fish farms will have no choice but to move to closed containment RAS systems that eliminate the problems caused by in-ocean net-pens, such as spilling raw sewage into pristine oceans, diseases, parasites, chemicals, escaped fish, genetic issues with wild fish, passing disease and parasites to wild salmon and killing them. The latter is a big issue in the Pacific Ocean as 10 species of wild salmonids, and other species, are threatened, from California to Korea. 

The NGO Save Our Salmon sent Chief Bill Cranmer, SOS President Eric Hobson and Dr. Andrew Wright who presented on the ‘Namgis Closed Containment Project in order to help catalyze a shift to this more sustainable technology. The farm is located on land beside the Nimpkish River, Vancouver Island, BC. and aims to grow Atlantic salmon to market size and reap the benefit as a brand distinct from the open net-pen product that now sells for considerably less as most consumers in the western world now avoid buying it for the environmental damage it causes.

Three issues that the fish farm giants suggest why they don't want to use RAS on land are: cost of electricity used, carbon footprint and capitalization. Presentations show that heat pumps reduce the power of electricity used by a factor of ten for on-land systems. They also show that when the raw sewage spillage is taken into account that net-pen in-ocean operations have a carbon footprint ten times that of on-land systems. As for capitalization, the Standing Committee on Closed Containment, of the federal Canadian government, recommends programs for making capital available. 

But until the government legislates fish farms out of the ocean, they will not move. This is an issue like airbags in cars. Car manufacturers said it couldn't be done for competitive cost pressure reasons. The government legislated airbags into cars and now every car in the world has airbags. As soon as BC removes site licences, the farms will be out of the water in 60 days.

As fish farms are a net negative to the BC economy, if they move back to Norway, BC still comes out far ahead in Gross Provincial Product and revenue from the sport, commercial and processing sectors in BC. In an upcoming post, I will detail the numbers. Some are staggering, for example, my first estimate of the cost of raw sewage spilling into our pristine ocean, a cost that the citizens of BC bear, exceeds $11 Billion, with the industry revenue size of only $469 Million, and the very small GPP contribution of only $61.9 Million, and only 1700 jobs (this is a BC Stats econometric, multiplier number, and I accept it as accurate. But I have collected the actual job numbers in this very small industry and it was only 840, after Marine Harvest let 60 staff go just before Christmas in 2011. Marine Harvest in particular has a Kudoa, myoliquifaction problem, and lost $12 Million of its stock in 2012. In 2013, MH Norway notes only 400 Canadian employees in their published numbers).

IPN - Fish Farms Cause Disease, Oct. 31, 2013

Fish farms have long been shown to be vectors for disease, but a recent PHD shows how stress causes reduced immune response and allows viruses to mutate, killing most of the farm. 65 Billion viruses per hour spill into surrounding waters and kill wild stocks.

Note: IPN means infectious pancreatic necrosis, a fatal disease.

See:  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130102083557.htm.

Gadan discovered that stress lead to increased production of the stress hormone cortisol. This affects the immune system of the fish and weaker immunity makes them more susceptible to infections. The fact that stress can trigger an outbreak of IPN is corroborated by the experiences of many in the field.

"For the first time, she was able to prove that when infected salmon fry were exposed to stress, otherwise benign variants of the IPN virus changed into pathogenic viruses. In other words, stress lowers resistance, increases the "production" of IPN virus in the fish's internal organs and can lead to benign viruses changing into pernicious variants of the virus."

Farmed fish are always under stress in net-pens because of crowding. That is why one third to one half of all aquaculture products are lost to disease. Fish farms like to say that wild fish give them diseases as they are not affected by those diseases. This is wrong because wild fish are not under the stress that penned Atlantics are. This is the issue of saying that nature has a problem, when the only problem apparent is the stress caused by farmed fish in cages. They need to be on-land in recirculating closed systems.

Fish farms shed 65 Billion viral particles per hour into the surrounding water. In a conservatively estimated 2 knot tide, this means those particles being spread to 12 nautical miles in a six hour tide. Then, when the tide turns the other way, the continued leaching of viruses from the fish farms is carried another 12 nautical miles in the other direction. This means that in half a day viruses can be found in 24 nautical miles of ocean, infecting wild fish as they are carried along.

It is easy to understand that in a closed Sound - most fish farms are in bodies of water with one closed end - say Clayoquot Sound, why there are only 501 wild chinook left in six streams, and why fish farms are the likely final cause of extirpation of the Kennedy Lake sockeye run, once the most important commercial harvest on Vancouver Island, BC.

The fish farm explanation is a communications strategy that may convince those with little experience in fish farm issues. The much more believable conclusion, however, is that wild fish do not spread, say IHN, because there are no wild salmon left anymore in Clayoquot Sound. The fish farms have killed them all.

Do recall that Miller's science showed 25% of farmed chinook in Clayoquot Sound had ISA and HSMI in her Cohen Commission testimony. DFO is doing nothing about this problem other than passively watching wild BC salmon die.

Cohen Commission Report - One Year Later, Oct29, 2013

Cohen Commission One Year Later

You may have thought the Cohen report was a stone dropped through DFO leaving not a ripple. You’d be right. Google DFO Cohen Commission and what you find is everyone else in the country commenting loudly but diddly from DFO. Go directly to DFO and search, and the result is virtually the same. Page after page of nothing about the Commission – a year of silence so far.

At the time, DFO swamped the Commission with 500,000 documents. But after Cohen completed the intended sessions, the first result for the Atlantic Ocean fish farm disease ISA was demonstrated in two wild sockeye fry from Owikeno Lake, Rivers Inlet. Then one contentious document DFO failed to give Cohen was leaked: a study showing ISA in dozens of wild BC salmon, co-authored by Molly Kibenge, then with DFO in Nanaimo.

Cohen reopened the hearings and the full extent of fish farm diseases cascaded out. The science experts Miller, F. Kibenge and Nylund were interviewed. Miller’s work noted literally hundreds of thousands of fish with ISA and HSMI in Clayoquot Sound farmed chinook and SLV phenotype ‘viral signature’ back to 1988 in Fraser sockeye. Today there are only 501 wild chinook in Clayoquot and up to 90% of some Fraser sockeye subcomponents die of pre-spawn mortality.

With this knowledge in hand, the focus of the most important recommendations in the 1200 page tome – 75 in total, pages 105 – 115, Volume 3 – came to centre on constraining and removing Discovery Island fish farms near Campbell River, and for DFO to relinquish its conflicting role of supporting fish farms and put its full effort into implementing the 2005 Wild Salmon Policy, and the 1986 Habitat Policy. The report says there should be a new western director general charged with bringing back Fraser sockeye: http://www.cohencommission.ca/en/pdf/FinalReport/CohenCommissionFinalReport_Vol03_02.pdf#zoom=100.

Since then, the CFIA started a perfunctory job of looking at a few thousand fish, and saying it could not find ISA – this after Cohen testimony discredited its lab as not being able to find ISA. And DFO? It’s moved on to aquaculture. The performance measure, wait for it, is: A transparent regulatory regime for aquaculture in British Columbia and an Integrated Management Plan for finfish, and shellfish, by March 2014.

And the latest Norwegian related fish disease has just been shown to be present in BC wild salmon – PRV in Virology Journal, 2013. This may be worse than ISA, as it is the virus associated with heart and skeletal muscle inflammation – HSMI, developed circa 1999 in Norway. This is what those yellow pink salmon and the dying pre-spawn Fraser chum and sockeye are now being shown to have. Sadly, a large pre-spawn sockeye die-off occurred for the first time in the Skeena River in the past couple of months.

You can support the cost of testing all these fish, as hundreds of BC citizens, including me, are doing, on Alex Morton`s blog. She has this to say: ``The Commission changed my life, I am tracking three European viruses, publishing on them in top scientific journals and informing the scientific community.  Government is increasingly lagging behind and irrelevant to the science on salmon.``

I understand that Miller and Riddell (CEO of the Pacific Salmon Foundation), good smart people, will be co-authoring a report on fish farm/wild diseases. Unfortunately, for them and us, fish farms, DFO, and CFIA will be parsing the news releases.

560 Words

dcreid@catchsalmonbc.com

DFO’s aquaculture initiative: The British Columbia Aquaculture Program: http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/rpp/2013-14/SO1/so-rs-1.3.2-eng.html

Alex M`s blog: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2013/10/tracking-viruses-2013.html.

Three volume Cohen report: http://www.cohencommission.ca/en/FinalReport/.

DFO regarding BC Aquaculture: http://www.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/rpp/2013-14/SO1/so-rs-1.3.2-eng.html. Sub-program 1.3.2 - British Columbia Aquaculture Program

Performance Measure. By March 2014: A transparent regulatory regime for aquaculture in British Columbia and an Integrated Management Plan for finfish, and shellfish.

The PRV paper: http://www.virologyj.com/content/10/1/230

 Whole-genome analysis of piscine reovirus (PRV) shows PRV represents a new genus in family Reoviridae and its genome segment S1 sequences group it into two separate sub-genotypes

Molly JT Kibenge^1†, Tokinori Iwamoto^1†, Yingwei Wang², Alexandra Morton³, Marcos G Godoy⁴⁵⁶ and Frederick SB Kibenge^1*

Miller Summary on Watershed Watch: http://www.watershed-watch.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Exh-1523-CAN006145.pdf.

65 On-land Fish Farm Systems, Oct 31, 2013

Go back and look at these previous posts.

This is the list of 65 different on-land fish farms comprising some 8100 on-land farms around the world that I have found: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2012/01/key-document-34-mostly-on-land-closed.html.

This is a list of more on-land fish farms: http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1880129387856188740#editor/target=post;postID=254807261999628982;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=9;src=postname

These posts also contain the technical papers showing that on-land fish farms make more money than the Norwegian-derivatives do in the ocean with their high environmental cost.

Here is a new, and fair comparison of on-land recirculating system versus in-ocean net-pen. It says on land is cheaper: http://tidescanada.org/wp-content/uploads/files/salmon/workshop-sept-2013/NEWD1-11TrondRostenandBrianVinci.pdf.

Cermaq Mainstream Owned by Norwegian Public - Updated Sept.24, 2013

Cermaq Mainstream is now owned 60% by the Norwegian government and hence the Norwegian public. Why are the Norwegian public exporting their diseases, environmental damage and sea lice problems around the world?

"Cermaq, 59.2 percent owned by the Norwegian state, said its second-quarter operating profit before adjustment for the value of fish stocks leapt to 229 million crowns from 60 million in the same period last year.

However, that was below analysts' average forecast of 262 million. Valderhaug said that while business was good in Norway and Canada, the company made a loss in Chile, in part because of losses to fish stocks there due to sea lice."

See: http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/08/27/cermaq-results-salmon-idINL6N0GS1JB20130827.

Cermaq lost 15% of their Chilean  stock to death by sealice. Meanwhile the Norwegian derivative companies are still putting out papers saying that sea lice don't kill salmon. In BC, Canada see the recent paper by Marty, Saksida et al on sea lice in the Broughton Archipelago.

So the Norwegians are affirming and denying sea lice effects in different countries around the world at the same time. Such contradictions are common.

Cermaq share price is: 101.0 Norwegian Kronen, and they plan to return to shareholders a total dividend of 4.5 to 5.0 billion crowns.

Shortly, I will be putting the stats together to show that fish farms are a net negative to the BC economy. This loss of 15% of farmed salmon in Chile can be rendered into an estimated dollar value in BC by multiplying: Millions of BC farmed salmon X .15 X $30 per salmon. The last value is the CFIA fee for a disease-infected salmon that is destroyed.

Critique: Mary Ellen Walling Letter to Victoria Times - Kibenge

This post contains three items: DC Reid article in the Times Colonist Newspaper, Mary Ellen Walling letter to the Times Colonist Newspaper, and my critique of Mary Ellen Walling's letter.

This is the DC Reid article:

Wild BC Salmon Lose Disease Doctor

A very important negative event occurred recently with the World Animal Health Organization (OIE) pulling Dr. Fred Kibenge’s status as the only disease reference lab in the western hemisphere for testing fish diseases, particularly, ISA from farmed Atlantic salmon.

I asked the OIE several times for the origin of the complaint but received no response. While news releases have pointed to complaints from other countries, the other factor is that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), discredited in the Cohen Commission testimony in December 2011, has made representations to the OIE to pull Kibenge’s status. In testimony they were cornered into admitting their interests are the export possibilities of the largely Norwegian-owned farms over natural wild salmon, a clear conflict of interest. Dr. Kim Klottins said the CFIA didn’t want to find ISA in BC. The video is not pretty.

You will have recently read in the TC that they tested several thousand wild salmon – not farmed fish, the source of the Atlantic Ocean diseases, ISA and HSMI – and announced they found no ISA in BC. That should be a good thing because the two diseases could well lead to the demise of all eleven Pacific salmonid species from California all the way to Korea. But it is not a good thing.

Drs. Miller (DFO, Nanaimo), Kibenge (PEI) and Nylund (the only other OIE lab in the world, in Norway), have found ISA in BC wild salmon. During Cohen they discredited the DFO, CFIA and the BC testing systems. The CFIA and DFO use the Moncton lab under Dr. Gagne, and the experts found its procedures don’t find ISA and its equipment is poor; this means a negative response for the worst fish farm disease means nothing. These doctors have found literally tens of thousands of cases of ISA in BC, dating all the way back to 1988.

For instance, Miller’s work showed 25% of Clayoquot Sound farmed Chinook had ISA and HSMI. This means 125,000 to 250,000 fish per farm. There are 22 farms in the Sound and wild Chinook numbers are at extinction levels – only 501 fish in six rivers. The Kennedy Lake sockeye run, once the largest on Van Isle, is no more.

The CFIA is a member on the OIE council which has members from many nations. Kibenge was the lab that found Atlantic ISA, (Nylund showed it was taken from Norway), in Chile. In 2008, ISA wiped out quarter of a billion farmed salmon, a loss of $2 Billion, with 13,000 losing jobs. The CFIA with its $740 million budget apparently wants to control the narrative with respect to farmed salmon diseases in Canada, and so Kibenge lost his status as the place where wild BC salmon have been sent most frequently for testing by concerned BC residents.

I read a scientific study not long ago that says fish farms cause a loss of 50% of the wild salmon/trout where they are introduced, and this includes BC. There are, for instance, only 6,000 wild Chinook spawners on the entire west coast of Vancouver Island. You will recall the Georgia St. coho fishery tanked in the 1980s. Then there are the Owikeno sockeye in the 1990s, etc. Fewer wild salmon translates into fewer jobs in BC Stats data, for example, commercial employment is down 50%. The largest sector, sport fishing, could likely employ more people, too. 

This is the Walling letter:

Re: “Loss of wild-salmon disease doctor will have major impact,” July 16.

(1)In the column, the actions of the World Animal Health Organization in pulling the infectious-salmon-anemia reference status at Dr. Fred Kibenge’s lab are presented as a negative. In fact, the organization’s decision should be viewed as a positive one. The organization conducted an audit with an international panel of scientific experts and found a series of weaknesses affecting the quality of diagnoses performed at the lab — which led to the unanimous decision by the general assembly of the organization to delist the lab.

(2). This news should reassure the public, as it shows that labs carrying international designations are held to high standards.

(3)It is correct that several thousand wild salmon were tested and no ISA was found. Thousands of Atlantic salmon have also been tested for ISA and those tests were also negative.

(4) ISA is a concern for B.C. salmon farmers — it has the potential to have an impact on our industry. That’s why our fish are tested and why we support ongoing wild- and farmed-fish monitoring programs.

(5). All the world’s oceans are connected, so it makes sense that viruses that have been found in other areas might eventually be found in B.C. That’s why ongoing monitoring of both wild and farm-raised fish is important so if a virus that causes disease, as not all do, does appear, it is found quickly and can be dealt with
.
Mary Ellen Walling
Executive Director, B.C. Salmon Farmers Association
Campbell River

Here is my Critique:

(1). The only evidence of complaint is the CFIA letter to the OIE. The CFIA told me only one other country complained.  And, of course, the CFIA, DFO and BC testing systems were shown to be deficient. 

(2). The Kibenge lab is the one that determined the Chile ISA infection and Nylund showed the ISA came from Norway. The subject only became public after Aqua Gen who transported eggs to Chile sued Nylund for bad science. They lost.

The big Norwegian companies have taken ISA to virtually every country they have gone to set up shop. The usual scenario is refusing to accept that ISA has been taken, with, once it is found, saying, well we just have to live with this. The problem in BC is the world's greatest salmon resource, the entire Pacific Ocean  is under threat of extinction, something that has never happened before.

Tragically, ISA is now in NS, NB and NL, as well as in BC - Miller, Kibenge and Nylund have found hundreds of thousands of cases of ISA in BC

(3). The DFO, CFIA and BC testing systems were all discredited by Miller, Kibenge and Nylund during the Cohen Commission.

(4). All the testing systems have been discredited. The BC public are right to be concerned with all wild salmon being killed by farmed diseases. Salmon farms can be eliminated from the ocean in two months by pulling their leases.

Also, the public is pretty appalled when I tell them that fish farms get reimbursed with taxpayer dollars - up to $30 per fish - by the CF|IA

(5). This is a classic fantasy generated by fish farms. Marine Harvest, Cermaq Minstream and Grieg Seafood, all Norwegian origin firms, are well aware that ISA, HSMI and other diseases are carried by imports of eggs and fry, both horizontal and vertical transmission of disease - not carried by the ocean tens of thousands of miles. That's just silly. 

Fish farms sure complain when environmentalists come anywhere close to their sites under quarantine, even though they are hemmorrheging 65 Billion viral particles per hour into wild BC salmon waters. 

Go read the Spinwatch.org article on how they neutralized a Science 2004 study that showed cancer causing chemicals and other persistent organic pollutants were in Scottish, and other country, farmed fish. It reads like a Hollywood thriller conspiracy blockbuster - link in several articles on this site. You will not believe any claim by a fish farm company ever again.

See Spinwatch link:: http://www.spinwatch.org/index.php/issues/health/item/141-spinning-farmed-salmon-part-3-of-3