Key Document: Cohen Commission Website, Updated Dec 20, 2013

You can find the Cohen Commission Website at: http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/206/301/pcobcp/commissions/cohen/cohen_commission/LOCALHOS/EN/INDEX.HTM.

DFO sent the address on my request, after I found no document on their site about having archived the site.

Cohen has been stored on Archives Canada website. Do use the URL as I spent a long time on the site looking for the website and found only scattered documents, perhaps 1% of the Cohen documents.

Here, from Feb 7, 2012 is an example of the documents regarding the deficiencies of ISA testing regs:

A Critique on Infectious Salmon Anemia Virus Detection Capabilities of the Canadian Fish Health Protection Regulations S.A. Goldes, MSc. 2011

INTRODUCTION

Atlantic salmon eyed eggs have been imported almost yearly into British Columbia during the period 1985 until 2010 from a number of countries including the USA, UK , Iceland and also from Atlantic Canada (BC Atlantic Imports). Source aquaculture facilities, except for more recent imports from Iceland (where the definition of lot was not achieved, however the rest of the procedures were the same) were certified free of specified piscine pathogens of concern according to testing protocols mandated in the Canadian Fish Health Protection Regulations (CFHPR). Immediately prior to shipment, eyed eggs were disinfected according to the CFHPR iodophor disinfection protocol. Certification and iodine egg disinfection together are the pillar’s of Canada’s defense against the introduction of exotic piscine diseases such as Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA). In order to protect British Columbia’s wild aquatic ecosystems and aquaculture industries these measures must provide a high level of security. Close scientific examination of these regulatory measures however raises concerns that in‐practice, these measures fail to provide the high level of protection required. This discussion focuses on issues with (1) ISA detection using cell culture, (2) sample size, and (3) iodine surface disinfection, however there remain many other weaknesses.

(1) INFECTIOUS SALMON ANEMIA VIRUS DETECTION USING CELL CULTURE

See: http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/206/301/pco-bcp/commissions/cohen/cohen_commission/LOCALHOS/EN/SCHEDULE/INDEX.HTM.

Here is the first paragraph of the article. Pretty damning stuff:

(1) INFECTIOUS SALMON ANEMIA VIRUS DETECTION USING CELL CULTURE

Infectious salmon anemia was first reported in Norway in 1984 (Plarre et al., 2005), coincidentally one year prior to the first importation of Atlantic salmon eyed eggs into BC from Scotland in 1985. Atlantic salmon eyed eggs were imported into BC almost yearly from the UK from 1985 to 1993, despite the fact that Norwegian ISAV epizootics were ongoing and also with the knowledge that detecting ISAV by cell culture was not possible (Mjaaland et al., 1997). Thus during the early years of Atlantic salmon imports (1985 to 1995) the Canadian government understood that the CFHPR protocols were incapable of detecting ISAV. At that time it was naively thought that ISA was limited to Norway alone and that Scotland was sufficiently distant. Later this assumption was proven erroneous, because shortly after ISAV cell culture became possible in 1995 (Dannevig et al., 1995a; Dannevig et al., 2 1995b), ISAV was detected in: New Brunswick in 1997 (Mullins et al., 1998), Scotland in 1998 (Rodger et al., 1998) and Maine, USA in 2001 (Bouchard et al., 2001), as well as several other countries. It is also worth mentioning,
that despite the devastation ISA has caused aquaculture elsewhere, ISA is still not listed in the current CFHPR as a pathogen of concern. The CFHPR specifies that the...

DFO Aquaculture Licencing - Posted December 18, 2013

While DFO has yet to respond to the Cohen Report, and took the site down (it's location is next to impossible to find, now) it is moving ahead on licencing regulations for in-ocean fish farm licencing. Cohen said the responsibility for fish farms should be lifted from DFO and DFO should get on with protecting wild salmon in BC. This regulation work was very poorly advertised for those of us who would respond. Here is what I said. You might like to email DFO yourself: feescomments.droitscommentaires@dfo-mpo.gc.ca.

Dear DFO:

BC residents overwhelmingly want fish farms out of our pristine ocean and on land.

You should be transitioning these old-tech dinosaurs to on-land, closed, recirculating systems. We don’t want them fouling our pristine ocean anymore. You need to pay attention to this as the only way forward for these multi-billion dollar Norwegian derivative companies is to: get out of the water, or go back to Norway. The issue is how soon you make a change.

The most recent symposium on closed containment was in Virginia this past September, 2013. Tides Canada maintains a link to the plus fifty presentations. They are even doing closed containment science in Norway for Pete’s sake: http://tidescanada.org/salmon/aquaculture-innovation-workshops-and-reports/.

For my list of 65 different on-land fish farm systems, comprising more than 8,100 actual on-land fish farms around the world see: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2012/01/key-document-34-mostly-on-land-closed.html.

Here is another link to my site: http://fishfarmnews.blogspot.ca/2011/10/closed-system-studies-post-being.html.

You need to get on the right side of this issue and eliminate fish farms from BC water. There are about 100 Million wild salmon in BC in a good year - this is not Atlantic Canada where there may be perhaps 2 Million wild Atlantics. Famed salmon have never been placed in waters with Pacific salmon before. I would guess that from California all the way around to Korea, the total is 1 Billion. You are placing all of these wild salmon at risk from fish farm diseases – 10 species of salmonids.

You should close the industry. Your own science person Kristi Miller showed in Cohen evidentiary hearings that Clayoquot Sound farmed chinook had 25% rates of both ISA and HSMI. That is more than 100,000 diseased farmed salmon per farm. There are only 501 wild chinook left in Clayoquot Sound – this is your own number – and the Kennedy Lake sockeye run collapsed more than 20 years ago.

You need to get fish farms out of the water. This small licencing fee of $1 Mil revenue is very small potatoes compared with what we in BC lose to your intransigence, and that Cohen told you to stop doing. By the way, where is your response to the Cohen Report more than one year later, when he said you should not be supporting farmed salmon anymore and should concentrate solely on wild salmon?

DC Reid

Mainstream – Slaughtered fish Money, Clayoquot Sound – Updated Dec 7, 2013

In response to Grant Wartkentin’s post about taxpayer-funded slaughter payments to Cermaq Mainsream for its Clayoquot Sound fish that had IHN, here are some quoted segments of his post: 

If Reid had done a 30 second Google search for "Cermaq financial statements," he would have found the actual amount of compensation we received in the public Cermaq quarterly financial reports, particularly for Q4 2012. 

The number you are looking for is on page 7 where it states:"Mainstream Canada received a compensation of NOK 15.4 million following the mandatory culling of the Millar site due to an IHN outbreak in July 2012."

That's roughly $2.8 million CAD, a far cry from Reid's imaginary number of $35 million. The market value of the fish which were culled, if they had grown to harvest, would have been at least 10 times that amount. 

Hopefully Reid will correct his mistakes, since his whole premise, and his numbers, are completely fabricated nonsense. 

In response: yes, it has been a long time since I have accepted anything a fish farm says without doing independent research. I lost belief in fish farms when they neutralized a Jan 9, 2004 Science article showing that farmed fish had high levels of PCB’s, cancer causing chemicals and persistent organic pollutants (1). The post on this read like a Hollywood movie script (2,3,4).  The same Albany university group has been publishing on the chemicals in farmed fish in the years following their Science 2004 article, and Norwegian scientists have also published on this in 2013 (5).

My investigations should result in the actual dollar figures paid for slaughtered farm fish all across Canada, but an estimate is the best that can be done now because fish farms are not transparent. I researched the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, and other sources to come up with what seems a reasonable approach – you can see it in the last post. So, until I have independent verification of the amount, my $35 Million estimate stands for now – I have noted Wartkentin’s claim of $2.8 Million. Should it or another figure prove to be the more likely than my current estimate, I will amend my figure.

Let me give you an example of non-transparency. A year ago, my research into fish feed showed that some companies were using chicken and other land animal faeces in fish feeds. I checked on Cermaq/Mainstream’s fish feed company EWOS and found that among other things, they were using, as they put it, feather meal. This means chicken feathers. So if you eat a farmed fish, you could be eating chicken feathers. These have been shown to contain multiple chemicals in them, for example, fluoroquinolines. I would not eat a farmed salmon.

I sent a note to EWOS asking them if they used chicken faeces and/or animal faeces in their fish feeds. I did not receive a response. I asked six times, and received no response. If I had been EWOS I would have wanted to be sure no one in the world thought I was using faeces in EWOS feed. So it is still not clear whether chicken faeces or other animal faeces are in EWOS feeds.

One other thing, Mainstream actually had IHN virus at three Clayoquot fish farms: Millar, Dixon and Bawden. Wartkentin does not mention this. And Grieg had IHN at Culloden in the Sechelt. In 2001 to 2003, 36 fish farms in BC had IHN, killing some 12,000,0000 farmed fish. Were these compensated for at today’s figure of $30 per fish this would mean $360 Million. Canadian taxpayers don’t want their tax money going to foreign multi-billion dollar corporations. In this case the company is owned, currently, 59.2% by the Norwegian government and the people of Norway.

The final thing I would add is that the tone of Wartkentin’s notes is not professional. If I were Mainstream/Cermaq I would not let him speak this way, or I would let him go.

1.       Science, Jan 9, 2004. This is the article that fish farms neutralized: http://www.albany.edu/ihe/salmonstudy/salmon_study.pdf. This Albany (Hites et al) group has gone on to author many reports on chemicals in farmed fish in the years since 2004, including chemicals that cause cancer.

2.       This is the spinwatch.org link to the article David Miller wrote on about the fish farms. It details a story that doesn’t seem real, one that would make a Holllywood script. After reading this, you will probably come to the same conclusion that I did:  I never believe anything a fish farm company says unless can independently verify the claim:  http://www.spinwatch.org/index.php/component/k2/item/139-spinning-farmed-salmon-part-1-of-3.

3.       This is part 2 of the Miller article: http://www.spinwatch.org/index.php/issues/spying/item/140-spinning-farmed-salmon-part-2-of-3

4.       This is part 3 of the Miller article: http://www.spinwatch.org/index.php/component/k2/item/141-spinning-farmed-salmon-part-3-of-3

5.    See the table Norwegian scientists referred to in October 2013, on chemicals in farmed salmon. The chemicals in farmed salmon are about a factor of 10 times all other commonly consumed meats. The table can be found here: http://alexandramorton.typepad.com/alexandra_morton/2013/11/dear-minister-of-health-farmed-salmon-toxins.html.

   

jj

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.