Lethal Atlantic salmon virus found on the West Coast

[bill barilko]

How about telling us which environmental group you are a paid shill for? Or are you blind enough to do it for free?

I have volunteered with various conservation groups in BC for decades.

My work is 100% unpaid in fact I have shelled out constantly to defend this gorgeous place from those who would destroy it all for a few pieces of silver.

Unlike those who have money as their god (we know who you are) I actually care about the future.

 

[Tonington]

You're starting to sound rather nervous

Your perception, which we can all see is far off from reality. I am concerned about the future, which is precisely why I and folks like myself want to know just what exactly are these PCR tests finding. Folks like yourself seem to need very weak evidence for justification of any course of action. Far from informed.

I have volunteered with various conservation groups in BC for decades.

Doing what?

 

[bill barilko]

Your perception, which we can all see is far off from reality. I am concerned about the future, which is precisely why I and folks like myself want to know just what exactly are these PCR tests finding. Folks like yourself seem to need very weak evidence for justification of any course of action. Far from informed.

Angrier and angrier or as one wag puts it "hell hath no fury like a moneyed interest masquerading as moral principle"

Doing what?

Working with groups like the Steelhead Society, the Land Conservancy and others to prevent the swine would destroy this place from doing so.

 

[Tonington]

Working with groups like the Steelhead Society, the Land Conservancy and others to prevent the swine would destroy this place from doing so.

Doing what?

 

[bill barilko]

Well the smell of rotting farmed slugs is becoming stronger and stronger.Fisheries managers appear to be scared sh!tless of the yanquis finding out about our nasty little secret and will say/do almost anything to make it appear that there is No Problem At All.Disgusting isn't too strong a word for their behaviour.

Salmon virus testing ban suggested

A federal manager suggested that independent Canadian labs not be allowed to test for an infectious salmon virus that was detected in wild B.C. sockeye salmon by a P.E.I. lab, a public inquiry heard Monday.

When Kim Klotins, acting national manager for disease control contingency planning at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, was asked why she made the suggestion, she responded, "It was an option I put forward basically because we could not confirm chain of custody."

The Cohen Commission has been looking into the decline of B.C.'s Fraser River sockeye salmon. (Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)Klotins said the government wanted to oversee the testing, and did not believe work by other labs was valid because the government could not know what happened to the fish prior to the tests in other labs.

"We already knew we were going to come out with a surveillance plan," she added during her testimony on the last day of the inquiry in Vancouver, B.C..

However, she acknowledged that the government is not presently sampling salmon to test for the virus and the plan won't be in place until later next year.

DNA from the salmon anemia virus, an infectious disease that has ravaged fish farms around the world, was first detected in two of 48 B.C. salmon smolts tested in October by the P.E.I.-based reference lab for infectious salmon anemia. The lab is part of a network affiliated with the OIE, the World Animal Health Organization. The samples of juvenile fish caught 100 kilometres from the nearest fish farm, had been sent to the P.E.I. lab by Rick Routledge, a professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C.

The OIE lab, run by Fred Kibenge, alerted the Department of Fisheries and Oceans about the results of its tests.

Managers contradicted DFO scientists' results
DFO scientists retested the samples weeks later, but deemed the results inconclusive because the samples were too degraded at that point.

Nevertheless, the government publicly announced that its tests for the virus gave negative results. It suggested the earlier positive results from other labs were not credible because they could not be duplicated.

Klotins said Monday even though the government labs testing for the infectious salmon anemia virus (ISA) in B.C. sockeye salmon may say something about what they've found, it's the managers' job to interpret the results. In this case, the managers decided to interpret them as negative.

The inquiry also heard that staff for Fisheries Minister Keith Ashfield dictated the content of a letter they wanted department officials to write in order to convince the U.S. Congress and Senate that the ISA virus doesn't exist in Canadian fish.

Government investigating OIE lab's methods
During cross-examination of government officials at the inquiry, lawyer Greg McDade accused the government of going after Kibenge's lab and trying to take away its OIE certification as punishment for the positive test results.

Klotins acknowledged that the methodology used by the lab is being investigated.

However, Stephen Stephen, director of the biotechnology and aquatic animal health sciences branch of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, said the government has no authority over the lab's OIE certification.

The Cohen commission is looking into the 2009 collapse of B.C.'s Fraser River sockeye salmon.

The inquiry, which began 21 months ago, originally heard closing arguments in November, but reconvened for three more days of hearings after the OIE lab announced the detection of the ISA virus and the government subsequently announced that it was unable to reproduce the results.

The inquiry's final report is due by the end of June.

 

[Tonington]

DNA from the salmon anemia virus, an infectious disease that has ravaged fish farms around the world, was first detected in two of 48 B.C. salmon smolts tested in October by the P.E.I.-based reference lab for infectious salmon anemia.

Speculation. Nobody knows what those PCR tests are detecting.

No tissue culture. No clinical disease symptoms. No viremia detected by histopathology.

Therefore there can be no determination as to what the PCR test is finding. There is no corroboration for this imperfect test.

So, what were you doing as an activist? Collecting samples? Necropsies? Analyzing samples? Or just being a loud mouthed know-nothing?

 

[bill barilko]

Does this thread smell like rotting fish or what?

 

[taxslave]

Doing what?

Mostly putting working people out of jobs in rural areas while they build themselves ever larger concrete jungles that totally destroy the environment.

 

[Tonington]

Does this thread smell like rotting fish or what?

It must be your breath blowing back in your face. I know I had professors who talked a lot, had horrible halitosis.

 

[bill barilko]

Mostly putting working people out of jobs in rural areas while they build themselves ever larger concrete jungles that totally destroy the environment.

Partially correct-once the environmental capital is used up by destroying the Salmon runs, fish bearing streams, forests and marine benthic environment rural dwellers will be well and truly f!cked.

What you fail to understand is that this is exactly what is happening now and it's what people like me and the organisations I volunteer for are trying to fight against.

It must be your breath blowing back in your face...

Not at all-it's the stench of lies from money grubbing swine who worship money and nothing else-as mentioned many times on this thread.

What more can be said about people who tout an ecologically, economically, morally indefensible practice like Salmon feedlots?

 

[taxslave]

Partially correct-once the environmental capital is used up by destroying the Salmon runs, fish bearing streams, forests and marine benthic environment rural dwellers will be well and truly f!cked.

What you fail to understand is that this is exactly what is happening now and it's what people like me and the organisations I volunteer for are trying to fight against.


Not at all-it's the stench of lies from money grubbing swine who worship money and nothing else-as mentioned many times on this thread.

What more can be said about people who tout an ecologically, economically, morally indefensible practice like Salmon feedlots?

The thing is the fish runs are for the most part being destroyed by the very people that should have the most interest in protecting them. The commercial fleet, native fisheries and the commercial sport fishery are the ones that are doing the most to destroy the runs through greed. Never mind the permanent destruction of most spawning beds caused by ever expanding cities. Loggers and fish farms do more to enhance habitat than all the groups that are dependent on wild stocks combined.
Fish farms do no harm to the environment but provide an important source of food at a reasonable cost and provide reasonably well paying jobs on the coast. That is a win win despite the bull**** ecoterrorists push on gullible city slickers in order to scam donations.
If you don't like open pens invent a cost effective alternative. I guarantee the major farms will be beating down your door with bags of cash.

 

[bill barilko]

The thing is the fish runs are for the most part being destroyed by the very people that should have the most interest in protecting them. The commercial fleet, native fisheries and the commercial sport fishery are the ones that are doing the most to destroy the runs through greed.

This from someone who doesn't fish at all.


And just what is a 'commercial sport fishery'-curious mind wants to know.

Never mind the permanent destruction of most spawning beds caused by ever expanding cities.

Sad to say it's been decades since anything more than a few dozen Coho or Chum spawned in or near any city in BC-WTF are you on anyway?

Loggers and fish farms do more to enhance habitat than all the groups that are dependent on wild stocks combined.

That is certainly the most idiotic thing you have ever said on this board and that's saying something.

As to the irony of clumping logging and industrial feedlots together I'll let it stand.

Fish farms do no harm to the environment but provide an important source of food at a reasonable cost and provide reasonably well paying jobs on the coast. That is a win win despite the bull**** ecoterrorists push on gullible city slickers in order to scam donations.

Congratulations-this is the second most idioitic thing you have ever posted here-nice to be on a roll eh?!

If you don't like open pens invent a cost effective alternative. I guarantee the major farms will be beating down your door with bags of cash.

There is no cost effective way to raise carnivorous fish-that's the point I and thousands of others have been making since the first abominations appeared here.

We subsidise the operation of those travesties with the capital contained in our environment-once that's used up so are the feedlots and their minimum wage jobs.

 

[Tonington]

Testing in the US by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has found no evidence of the virus. They checked sockeye, chum, coho, chinook, steelhead, and some farmed Atlantic in the state. No virus found.

That's good news, and more validation that Morton's results were in fact false.

 

[taxslave]

Testing in the US by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has found no evidence of the virus. They checked sockeye, chum, coho, chinook, steelhead, and some farmed Atlantic in the state. No virus found.

That's good news, and more validation that Morton's results were in fact false.

Thanks Ton. There was never any doubt. That woman is a blight on society. I can't remember where she came from but her and her husband showed up on the coast about 25 years ago demanding that all logging must be stopped because of the whales. She has been sucking money out of the gullible with grant ever since.

 

[Tonington]

She's a charlatan. She doesn't have a background in molecular biology, or fish health. She has been relying on a molecular test-polymerase chain reaction (PCR)- that is very sensitive, but so far hasn't even tried to grow the virus from the samples she says contain the virus. When CFIA, and others have tried to grow the virus from her weak positive samples, they have found no virus at all. If the virus was present, they would take the organs, grind it up, and filter down to the size where virus particles would be captured. Then take the filtered material, put it on salmon kidney cells or chinook embryo cells, and a few weeks later there would by cytopathic effects (CPE) observed in the cells. But she has never done that, and all attempts to do so have failed to produce CPE.

For anyone that knows anything about fish health and molecular biology, this is a standard test to perform. The PCR test informs as to what organism you think may be present. But all the PCR test does is confirm that there is some DNA that binds to the primers. That can be a result of contamination in the lab, or pieces of unrelated DNA that will still bind to the sequence your primers are selecting for. That's why you need to do the cell culture tests. It's what DFO/CFIA and every other fish health regulating body on Earth require for confirmed detection of a virus.

Her recent obsession is piscine reovirus (PRV), which some believe causes heart and skeletal muscle inflammation (HSMI). The problem is, that the virus is found in healthy fish, and in fish suffering from the disease. There's a system for classifying disease causing organisms called Koch's postulates. The first and third requirements fail with respect to PRV as the causative agent of HSMI:
1. The microorganism must be found in abundance in all organisms suffering from the disease, but should not be found in healthy organisms.
3. The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism.

Now Koch's postulates have limitations, but if the organism is found in healthy and sick individuals, and does not predictably cause clinical disease symptoms, then cause and effect are not established. It may be that the virus in combination with some other organism, or some environmental effect, or some host pathology are needed to cause disease. Or the virus may not be associated at all with the disease. It may be some benign virus that causes no pathology at all.

But you'll never hear Morton discussing the relevant context in which her results should be interpreted.

 

[taxslave]

The main difference between you and her is that you are a scientist while she is a nutbar on a mission. She started out saving whales from themselves and for the past decade or so has been dedicated to closing fish farms. At one point she was getting help and possibly money from the pacific trollers association when they were busy claiming farm fish were destroying the wild runs they have been raping and pillaging for decades for free.They seem to have backed off in recent years. Perhaps they have seen the writing on the wall.

 

[Liberalman]

That's why fish farms should be on land in tanks instead of pens in the ocean where they can contaminate the rest of the species

 

[Tonington]

At one point she was getting help and possibly money from the pacific trollers association when they were busy claiming farm fish were destroying the wild runs they have been raping and pillaging for decades for free.They seem to have backed off in recent years. Perhaps they have seen the writing on the wall.

Yep. Alaska especially. The state hatcheries in Alaska produce more smolts than the industry in Norway and Chile combined to keep their catch high. It's on the order of billions of smolts each year. What effect does that have in the Pacific? And in the Atlantic, Greenland has increased their catch of Atlantic salmon in their waters, and now starting to sell their harvest to commercial factories. Only one out of every five fish feeding off Greenland comes from rivers outside of North America.

Fish farms have a bad reputation, in part because of the alignment of commercial fishers and environmentalists. To touch on the Alaskan smolt production, it takes nearly twice the biomass to produce one pound of wild salmon as it does to produce one pound of farmed salmon. Which is more ecologically sound? Alaskan ranching or farmed fish? The answer in many cases is dependent on values, not facts. As is the case with most controversies.

Evidence is increasingly showing as well that the health impacts of farmed salmon on wild salmon have been highly exaggerated. That's not to say there is no risk, but rather there are far larger risks that do not receive the same attention.

 

[L Gilbert]

Testing in the US by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife has found no evidence of the virus. They checked sockeye, chum, coho, chinook, steelhead, and some farmed Atlantic in the state. No virus found.

That's good news, and more validation that Morton's results were in fact false.

Interesting. Infectious Salmon Anaemia - Fact Sheet - Animals - Canadian Food Inspection Agency

Infected salmon declared fit for human consumption by Canadian Food Inspection Agency | Toronto Star

Salmon Confidential Exposed | Fact-checking the claims made in the "Salmon Confidential" documentaryPersonally, I wasn't impressed with Atlantic salmon, so I'll stick with Pink, Sockeye, or whatever, but if people want the Atlantic, that's fine.

 

[taxslave]

That's why fish farms should be on land in tanks instead of pens in the ocean where they can contaminate the rest of the species

Find a single instance of a farm fish being put into the ocean with lice attached and I might agree with you.
The fact is wild salmon contaminate the farm fish. Course you living in the middle of nowhere would not know about such things.

Interesting. Infectious Salmon Anaemia - Fact Sheet - Animals - Canadian Food Inspection Agency

Infected salmon declared fit for human consumption by Canadian Food Inspection Agency | Toronto Star

Salmon Confidential Exposed | Fact-checking the claims made in the "Salmon Confidential" documentaryPersonally, I wasn't impressed with Atlantic salmon, so I'll stick with Pink, Sockeye, or whatever, but if people want the Atlantic, that's fine.

Somehow many people are under the erroneous impression that we only raise Atlantics on the west coast.