Today was day one of the week-long hearing - two lawsuits to stop piscine orthoreovirus-infected farm salmon from entering BC waters.
Margot Venton from Ecojustice was first up today. She is representing me.
I am challenging the Minister of Fisheries' policy not to test young farm salmon for piscine orthoreovirus (PRV) before issuing a permit for their transfer into marine salmon farms. My concerns is the spread and effect of PRV from farm salmon on wild salmon, herring and other fish.
Remedy that I am seeking from the court is:
- a ruling that the DFO policy of not testing for PRV is unlawful,
- an order that the minister must test all farm salmon from PRV
- prohibition of transfer of infected fish into marine salmon farms where the virus pours out into contact wild salmon salmon.
Incredibly there are 35,000 pages of materials associated with this case!
Margot began with explaining how, in 2013, I learned that PRV-infected fish were going to be transferred into a Marine Harvest salmon farm. When I asked DFO if they were going to allow this, they responded, yes, that testing for PRV was not required. I eventually took DFO and Marine Harvest to court and I won in 2015. The court ruled PRV is a concern and DFO should be testing farm salmon for it.
DFO and Marine Harvest appealed the decision, but dropped the appeal a few months later when DFO scientists published a paper reporting that PRV was causing the disease heart and skeletal muscle inflammation (HSMI) in a fish farm in Okisollo Channel. This meant that PRV is a disease agent, and thus by law (section 56 of the Fishery General Regulations) DFO can not allow fish infected with this virus into the water.
While the Minister of Fisheries decided not to appeal the decision, based on science from within his own department, he refused obey the court and actually test farm salmon for PRV. As Margot pointed out "if the Minister did not want to accept the court’s ruling he should have not abandoned his appeal. What the Minister can’t do is walk away from the court's decision as if it didn’t occur"
Margot explained to Justice Cecily Y. Strickland, that the Minister of Fisheries has failed to consider the increasingly dire condition of stocks migrating past salmon farms. An alarming and growing number of wild salmon stocks are being "red-listed" as endangered with imminent extinction. The Minister is not saying that PRV is harmless, he is saying that it is not killing enough wild fish, for him to test all farm salmon for the virus. Unfortunately no one in DFO is looking at the health of wild salmon exposed to salmon farms and by not testing for PRV, no one will ever know what effect it is having.
The Minister is using the health of the farm salmon as a proxy for the effect of the virus on wild fish. The salmon farming industry is self-reporting low mortality due to PRV in the farms and so DFO's position is that there is no problem, the virus is not dangerous to salmon.
Margot pointed out that salmon in farms are protected from predators, fishing, many forms of pollution and life is easy, food drops from the sky. So looking at the impact of PRV on farm salmon, doesn't inform us about the impact of PRV on wild salmon, where even the slightest weakness means increased threat from predators.
Margot likened the Minister's PRV Policy to a blunt force tool - unless an entire conservation unit is harmed by the virus, he is not going to order testing of farm salmon for the virus.
Next up was Lisa Nevens, lawyer for the Minister of Fisheries.
Nevens explained that the Minister of Fisheries has considered his PRV policy several times and every time he comes to the same conclusion - no need to test.
Interestingly NevensShe brought up the BC strain of PRV
Nevens only just got started with her arguments. We will hear more from her tomorrow. I will be interested to hear more about the "BC strain of PRV." This is a mysterious virus that no one has provided any information on. I have had thousands of BC wild and farmed salmon tested, published two papers on the virus, with a third in the works and we have never seen it. The two papers reporting on the impact of PRV in BC farm salmon and Chinook salmon report the same strain as I reported on first in 2013.
No one has entered the BC strain of PRV it into the international virus database Genbank, or told us what fish they found it in.
If there really is a strain of PRV that is natural to BC and harmless the salmon farmers might be able to avoid the consequences of laws of Canada. So a lot is riding on proving the BC strain of PRV really exists.
To be continued...
THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone who showed up in the pouring rain to let us know how important these lawsuits are!
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