The actual truth is
Mary Ellen Walling, Courier-Islander, Friday, May 25, 2012
Members of the BC Salmon Farmers Association regularly have independent and third-party labs test the health of our fish - it is, of course critical to our business to constantly monitor the health of our farm-raised salmon to keep them healthy, and to meet regulations set to keep wild salmon and other fish healthy.
The management of a naturally occurring fish disease that has infected a salmon farm on the west coast of Vancouver Island is an excellent example of how farm companies use their own in-house monitoring protocols along with multiple external labs to assess, identify and manage any fish health event.
Those labs - which include the provincial veterinary laboratory and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' Pacific Biological Station - are providing results to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
Our companies are following all direction from government agencies, being proactive in their management and sharing significant amounts of information.
This event is being handled professionally and efficiently.
Finally - Ms. Koch has never contacted the BC Salmon Farmers Association directly for answers to any of her questions. If she or any of your other readers would like mailing and email addresses, that is all available on our website www.salmonfarmers.org.
Mary Ellen Walling, Executive Director BC Salmon Farmers Association
Mary Ellen Walling's letter is in response to the following:
The public deserves the truth
Angela Koch, Courier-Islander, May 23, 2012
To BC Salmon Farmers Association:
A few weeks ago I saw you respond negatively to a letter asking for independent testing of your farmed salmon. Now two of your farms have tested positive for the highly contagious IHN virus, resulting in the ordered killing of your stocks. Without any proof you place the blame of your outbreaks entirely on wild fish, while deceptively proclaiming IHN won't harm wild salmon. Those studies you quote were done on adult salmon, yet you don't mention numerous studies showing IHN to be deadly to juvenile wild salmon, you know, the innocent ones now swimming past your filthy infected farms. While world leading labs are confirming a myriad of "European strain" diseases from store bought BC farmed salmon, you not only deny those findings as well, but arrogantly still refuse independent testing! This has many of us questioning your ethics or lack thereof. Since your main argument with independent lab results is about "foul play" or "contamination" why don't you accompany your fish to the lab, just to make sure there's no hanky panky going on? If your fish are as squeaky clean as you claim then there should be no problem. The public and wild salmon deserve to know!
Mary Ellen Walling's letter is in response to the following:
