ISA allegation creates angst for BC salmon sector Verification tests underway
Aquaculture North America, By Quentin Dodd , November 7, 2011
Last month it was announced that a strain of the Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) virus that had devastated stocks in salmon farms from Norway to Chile had been found in two wild sockeye salmon smolts from British Columbia’s River’s Inlet.
And it was emphasized at a press conference called by anti-salmon farm activist Alexandra Morton and her associate Dr David Routledge of Simon Fraser University, that the virus had been identified as being a European strain, likely originating from a salmon farm in the province.
It was the first time, despite close to 5000 tests, that the ISA virus had been reported in BC salmon or in salmon from anywhere else in the Pacific Northwest; and the shock value was fully enhanced by numerous headlines across not just North America but the entire globe about a “deadly” or “lethal” virus having been found in BC salmon.
That kind of statement, said an east-coast scientist intimately involved in the testing of the fish, blew his findings and the situation “out of proportion”.
“It’s nothing really to change the industry,” virologist Dr. Fred Kibenge said in one media report in the Seattle area. “It’s very unfortunate that people are spinning it this way. It’s really dangerous when you put it that way.”
In various parts of the United States, a number of groups, politicians, scientists and high-profile commentators instantly went into action mode, calling for drastic measures to be taken as quickly as possible against the BC salmon-farming industry.
Considerable amounts of misinformation were disseminated, not the least being that the samples of fish Routledge had taken at River’s Inlet and shipped to Kibenge at the Atlantic Veterinary College in Prince Edward Island had been destroyed.
That quickly turned out to be untrue, as the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) stepped in to take charge of the samples and the situation and investigate all aspects of the situation. The agency is now looking into whether it can verify Kibenge’s work and findings: that two out of 48 sockeye salmon smolts Routledge had obtained from the inlet some 100 kms (60 miles) from the nearest salmon farm, had tissue that tested “positive” for ISAv.
Kibenge had reported his findings to the CFIA and also, evidently, to Routledge but not to the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), because his findings hadn’t yet been independently verified.
In the week or so following the press conference, various groups and individuals, including Kibenge, took steps to clarify some important elements surrounding the ISA issue.
One such clarification was that the highly sophisticated, but also very sensitive method Kibenge had used, has sometimes been known to give out “false positives” for ISAv.
There was also the point made that ISAv comes in two forms, the virulent one which is most often but not always deadly for Atlantic salmon in farms, and a non-virulent strain.
As this issue of Aquaculture North America goes to press members of the aquaculture industry are waiting for results of the scientific verification tests now being carried out by the CFIA in Canada. That process is expected to take several weeks.
