Briefing on Sept 6, 2019 Special Meeting of the Fish Health Committee
On June 4th the DFO Minister announced further steps to enhance aquaculture sustainability in BC. Within this announcement, DFO made a commitment to work with industry to further implement a precautionary approach in decision making by introducing enhanced testing and reporting of HSMI and Jaundice Syndrome, as well as undertaking screening in freshwater aquaculture hatcheries for PRV.
Further to this announcement, the Minister is requesting that we convene a special meeting of the Fish Health Technical Working Group to discuss and solicit your feedback on these topics. The Minister is particularly interested in seeking your input on management measures that could be taken in the event of positive test results of HSMI, Jaundice Syndrome, and PRV.
This meeting was well attended by observers - scientists, wilderness tourism operator, First Nation Fisheries, Environmental groups and citizens.
The intent of the meeting was positive – how should DFO respond to the new science on PRV and create a world-class aquaculture management plan? However, industry and government rapidly cornered themselves because, they couldn’t answer basic questions like – what is their definition of HSMI, why do they think there is a BC “strain” of PRV when no one has produced the genetic sequence of this strain and what exactly is the role of the CFIA.
We heard a report on what other countries are doing about this virus, but it completely omitted that Washington State has banned PRV-infected farm fish and had to destroy 1.8 million infected farm fish, because the industry can’t find PRV-free fish. This is highly relevant because Washington is the only other region farming Atlantic salmon among Pacific salmon.
We heard that DFO does not have the authority to empty a fish farm. This is in addition to the statement a couple of months ago that DFO is not allowed to fine the industry for infractions. This means there are no meaningful consequences for ignoring regulations or stocking farms with fish that could be dangerous to wild salmon. In my view, a lack of consequences has heavily damaged the industry and given them no reason to strive to be better.
There was strong suggestion from many that DFO has to sample farms differently, otherwise DFO has no real idea what is going on in the farms. There was push back that no other agriculture is so heavily regulated. However, no other feedlot-type operation exposes wild animals to pathogens like salmon farms do. Wild birds are carefully excluded from chicken farms, wild deer cannot wander through pig farms, the risk posed by such disease transmission is much to great. If the salmon farmers got into closed containment, the entire issue of what to do about PRV in farm salmon would go away for them.
There were no ideas from DFO as to how they could respond to finding HSMI or it’s Pacific salmon counterpart, Jaundice/anemia. When I asked the DFO vet what he meant by “biosecurity” he said it meant he would visit that farm last on his rounds… He seems a good person and wants to do his job in a diligent manner, but he agreed he had no tools to protect wild salmon from the farm salmon. It was not on his radar, I don't think DFO made it part of his job description.
The two most contentious points were DFO's decision to only test for Norwegian and Icelandic strains of PRV, when all PRV strains in BC are from the Atlantic. No one has produced the genetic sequence of the alleged BC strain of PRV, no sequence of PRV in BC has been reported prior to 2011 and the differences between PRV found in Norway, Iceland and BC are so small and variable that no one has been able to design a test that can do this. MOWI’s rep said there were lots of papers on the BC strain of PRV, but there are none.
The industry (MOWI) made a strange comment, I can only hope was a joke, that perhaps all farm salmon should be infected with PRV so that they can build immunity, but Dr. Kibenge pointed out that using a live virus is illegal. Brad Hicks, an industry rep, offered that PRV should not be a concern because it is in the water already, entirely ignoring the dangerous dynamic of amplifying a virus, and thus stimulating mutation and escalating virulence. For example ISA virus is natural to Norway, but it is recognized that after it entered the aquaculture environment it mutated and became virulent and they certainly don’t allow ISAV infected fish into marine farms.
The most concerning element was that there was no concern for the state of wild salmon. They were not mentioned. Everything was about the health of farm salmon with no suggestion that the shedding rate of the virus or any other impact on wild salmon should be addressed or that the extreme state of wild salmon was even a concern. There was also active disregard for the powerful tools under development within DFO’s genomic lab, such as the VDD Biomarker Panel. This is weakening DFO’s potential as a leader in science and fish management wild, hatchery and farmed.
The top scientists on the subject of diagnosing HSMI and whether PRV is from the Atlantic or the Pacific had made the effort to attend but were not allowed to speak, Emiliano Di Cicco and Gideon Mordecia. This significantly undermined the validity of the meeting.
Does DFO have a Pacific Region Director of wild salmon? If not such a position should be created ASAP and that person should be at meetings with industry to represent the needs of wild salmon. This would balance the situation within DFO so this type of way out of out-of-kilter situation would not occur. The protection of wild salmon was left to the non-government, non-industry committee members.
11 Recommendations to the Minister of Fisheries Re: Screening for the diseases caused by PRV
Alexandra Morton
- Monthly fish health audits of each farm
- Information and samples collected directly by the authority (DFO), not industry
- Include fish classified as “poor performers”, “environmental mortality”, and “mechanical/handling mortality”, in addition to, “fresh silvers”
- The DFO diagnostic for HSMI has to match the international standard (Biering and Garseth, 2012) or DFO is not diagnosing the international disease, HSMI
- The diagnostic for jaundice/anemia has to follow the case definition described in the DFO paper Di Cicco et al (2018) as this is the only reporting on this disease/syndrome in BC waters.
- The only true sub-clinical test for HSMI or jaundice/anemia is the VDD biomarker panel, as all other methods rely on visible or clinical signs.
- If subclinical signs of HSMI or Jaundice/anemia are detected in a salmon farm, the only precautionary method to reduce exposure to wild salmon is to cull the farm. If these diseases are made “reportable”, mandatory culling could be assisted with government funding.
- As there are no consistent differences in the genetic sequences of PRV-1a between Norway, BC or Iceland, no genetic sequence of “BC strain PRV” has been produced and no PRV genetic sequence in BC prior to 2011 exists, the test for PRV must be an internationally verified test that will detect all PRV genotypes and subgenotypes. Such as Haugland et al., 2011; Løvoll et al., 2012; Glover et al.,2013 with a Ct cut off of 40. Positive tests can be further verified with a conventional RT-PCR (segment S1 or M2) to generate a sequence for genotyping.
- The sample size for testing each group of fish entering a single farm has to be 350 fish. If the fish are coming from more than one hatchery both hatcheries have to be tested.
- Validate the VDD biomarker panel developed in the Miller lab as this the only method of early disease detection.
- If a single positive test is detected, the highly contagious nature of PRV would require denial of a transfer permit of these fish into any form of marine salmon farm, this would also have to apply to enhancement hatcheries