Joseph Beres, CFIA: "we are turning the PR tide to our favour"

On November 9, a few days after a media conference during which the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) announced to the world that there were no confirmed cases of salmon-killing ISA virus in Brisih Columbia, Joseph Beres, Inspection Manager at CFIA, wrote the following email:

"Con,

It is clear that we are turning the PR tide to our favour, – and this is because of the very successful performance of our spokes[people] at the Tech Briefing yesterday, – you, Stephen, Peter and Paul were a terrific team, indeed. Congratulations!

One battle is won, now we have to nail the surveillance piece, and we will win the war also.

Cheers,
Joe."

His colleague Dr. Con Kiley, who had taken a lead role during the CFIA conference declaring BC to be an ISA-free zone, wrote in that same email chain:

"Concentrate on the headlines, that's often all that people read or remember. Both the "Top Stories" and the "Related Pieces"."

Yesterday, this email exchange was entered as evidence at the Cohen Commission, and so I wrote to Mr. Beres the following message:

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 3:30 PM, Ivan Doumenc wrote:

Mr. Joseph Beres
Inspection Manager
Canadian Food Inspection Agency
joseph.beres@inspection.gc.ca

Cc: the public

Dear Mr. Beres,

It was revealed at the Cohen Commission today that on November 9, you wrote an internal email addressed to several of your colleagues at The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which read:

< Joseph Beres' message here >

Commission Counsel Brock Martland suggested that this language evokes the attitude of a "hockey game", where the politicized discussion of science becomes "an adversarial thing".

Mr. Martland asked one of your colleagues at CFIA, Dr. Kim Klotins, whether this kind of cheering for one side against another was part of the mandate of CFIA and what could possibly be your state of mind when you wrote this email.

Dr. Kim Klotins declined to comment, stating that she could not second guess what you were thinking.

I believe Dr. Klotins has a point. So I thought that instead, I would ask you the question directly. Could you please explain what was the meaning of your comment in this email written shortly after the CFIA's phone media conference last November? Is it part of your professional responsibilities as an inspection manager to take sides?

Your comment is potentially troubling as it may suggest that you had no intention of finding the ISA virus. Is this true?

Thank you in advance for you interest in my inquiry.

Yours very truly

Ivan Doumenc
Vancouver, BC

And last evening, Mr. Beres wrote me the following answer:

On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 5:49 PM, Joseph Beres <Joseph.Beres@inspection.gc.ca> wrote:

Dear Ivan Doumenc,

Thank you very much for your e-mail, this provides me the opportunity to explain first hand what I was thinking when I wrote to Dr. Kiley the following:

"It is clear that we are turning the PR tide to our favour... Congratulations! One battle is won, now we have to nail the surveillance piece, and we will win the war also."

I was thinking that, with a successful Tech Briefing done, we served the public interest very well by telling the truth: no assumptions, no speculations, no hidden agenda, but the unvarnished truth. As a CFIA employee, I was, and am, proud of the way how we conducted the ISA suspect investigation from day one, including the Tech Briefing in question.

For the record, since its inception, the CFIA, as a federal Agency, has established an international reputation which is second to none in telling the truth. For example, when we confirmed the first case of BSE or a low path Avian Influenza finding, we reported them to the OIE (International Animal Health Organization) without hesitation, regardless of what the potential immediate economic impact would have been.  As a side note, the same CFIA official, Dr. Kiley, who did the Tech Briefing for the ISA and to whom I sent my congratulations, was also closely involved in the above mentioned two cases (BSE and low pat AI), thus contributing to the Agency's international reputation as a truth-teller. So my congratulatory note to him was deeply rooted in history.    

In this context, "winning the war" for me meant to stick with our principle of telling the truth, as we always did. We did so by upholding scientific evidence not suppressing it. As a regulatory Agency mandated to safeguard animal health in Canada, preserving the CFIA's reputation as a truth-teller is the key for us, - both the public trust and international trade hang in the balance. The war I mentioned, therefore, is not against anything or anyone, but it is our continuous effort for the cause of our credibility. 

So my state of mind was and is the following: by telling the truth first is how we want to earn and preserve the public trust and build public relations, - so good PR comes second as a by-product.

Thank you for the opportunity again. Should you need further clarification on my position or what I meant, please let me know.

Respectfully,

Joseph Beres DVM

Acting Regional Director

BC Mainland-Interior

Burnaby, BC

Phone: (604) 666-9754

Cell: (604) 862-5843

I think Mr. Beres' response speaks for itself so I won't comment on it. I would recommend, though, that you widely forward this edifying exchange to your email lists and Facebook friends. I would also suggest that you send Mr. Beres your own letter of inquiry and/or give him a call.


I will keep you informed on any further developments.

Our finest hour

Salmon sampling. Photo Anissa Reed.

On a sunny afternoon two weeks ago at a small creek near the Vedder River, we sampled eight salmon in under two hours. It was fair to say we were getting pretty good at it.  

It wasn’t a very difficult protocol to follow – mostly common-sense rules put in place by biologists to avoid cross-contamination of fish – but only a few weeks before, I didn’t even know those rules existed. When we had received our training in fish sampling at UBC I had been overwhelmed, taking refuge in the thought that this workshop was really meant for other, more hands-on oriented people. But here I was, on the banks of this creek, taking fish samples myself and very much on top of things. It was empowering beyond words.

For the last fish of the day, I was the one doing the cutting while Nicole Mackay, my designated sampling buddy for over half-a-dozen trips now, was taking the notes and pictures. I disinfected my hands, put on a new set of surgical gloves, checked that the cutting board and instruments had been thoroughly disinfected. I then picked up the animal lying on the gravel (a chum salmon), took a few steps to a spot where no fish had been sampled, and went to work.

“Male. Spawning colors. Both eyes. Fresh”, I said as Nicole wrote the words on her clipboard. I measured the animal, weighed it, announced the numbers then moved out of the way as Nicole placed an ID tag on the fish and took a picture. I looked into the gills on each side of the fish and said: “Pale. White fungus”. I heard the click of Nicole’s camera in my ear as she took pictures of the gills. I took the knife and cut the fish’s belly open. “Spawned”, I said. Nicole placed the tag on again and took a picture of the animal’s insides. With my gloves now covered in blood, I detached the spleen, liver, gallbladder and heart, along with a piece of the gills and placed them all on the board in front of me. I then cut the kidney open – a really weird organ in a fish, attached like a thin strip of black tape along the animal’s backbone. As each organ came out, we assessed its condition. Nicole placed the tag on the board and took a picture of the organs. 

That salmon, like most others sampled on that day, looked in good shape apart from its gills. Every single fish we inspected in that particular creek on the Vedder River system near Cultus Lake, BC, had this strange white fungus accumulating in the gills, like a distinct signature that something was off in that otherwise healthy run. What did it mean? We didn’t know, and thankfully, it wasn’t our job to reach any conclusions about it, just to gather some good samples.

Nicole prepared two vials containing some RNALater solution, a storage agent meant to preserve the samples for several weeks until they can be analyzed, while I popped a scalpel and pair of tweezers out of their sterile packages to cut small pieces of the animal’s heart and gills. After the vials had been safely sealed with their samples inside, I tossed the rest of the heart and gills into a ziplock which Nicole marked and put on ice. That was it, we were done. 

The creek lying at our feet was alive with salmon. There were hundreds of them both live and dead in this tiny, shallow, marvelously beautiful and secluded space, only a stone throw from the main road yet almost totally invisible to the casual driver. I had gone through so many heartbreaks this year, staring aimlessly at salmon-deprived rivers, that I knew the exact value of what I was looking at. A creek with spawning salmon. The hope of a renewal. I stood there for a few minutes before heading back to the car, breathing in the energy, storing it for future battles. We had our samples for that particular run. Mission accomplished.

Over the past few months, members of the public have answered Dr. Alexandra Morton’s call to take the matter of salmon disease in their own hands. They have responded to DFO’s shocking and criminal negligence by going out and taking fish samples themselves. With the stunning results that we know: it has been dubbed ‘salmongate’. 

Even though DFO and the Province had been dismissing for years the possibility that ISA could appear in BC, members of the public found evidence of that deadly virus almost immediately, as soon as they started looking for it. They found it in very different locations and in almost every species of Pacific wild salmon. The signs of a widespread pandemic have emerged very quickly, forcing government to engage in a dangerous – and, we now know, self-defeating – enterprise of denial. Recently, the lid finally came off when it was leaked that DFO had actually known for a fact about the presence of ISA in wild salmon for at least a decade, but had opted to cover it up.

So much so, that Justice Bruce Cohen had no choice but reopen for three days his inquiry in the decline of the 2009 Fraser sockeye salmon, for fear of losing his good name and reputation if he didn’t.

Last week, a few days before the Commission was to briefly reopen its doors, Alex Morton sent a very kind email to some members of her fish sampling crew. “I have never heard a single complaint from any of you about the cold and wet, you don't expect anything back you are totally dedicated to the fish and support each other”, she wrote, emphasizing the importance of the historic moment that we were living. “This set of hearings is because of us” she commented, “the work all of you have been doing has forced the commission and it has inspired the scientists to be bold.” And then, she prophesized the following: “we will be taking the door of secrecy off its hinges next week”.

And tonight, after an extraordinary first day at the Cohen Commission, this prophecy has been fully realized. As Drs. Kristi Miller and Fred Kibenge took turns all day to blow the whistle and detonate bombshell after bombshell inside Cohen’s courtroom – truly shocking revelations! which will require a separate blog – , scientists have indeed been bold, and the door of secrecy has indeed come off its hinges. What was done today cannot be undone. No person in their right mind can ever deny again the existence of ISA in BC – as government has done so recklessly and unwisely for the past few weeks – without drowning in their own ridicule. Some scientists, in particular, such as Dr. Gary Marty from the province of BC, will have to face some very hard questions in coming days and weeks.

The salmon-industrial complex is now fighting for its life and so we should expect it to strike back at us pretty hard with all that it has. But whatever comes our way next, we must never forget that WE, THE PEOPLE have made this historic day happen. 

We reopened those Cohen proceedings ourselves with no outside help, by going out into the wilderness on our own initiative and with our own limited means, by taking samples of wild salmon, and by finding the ISA virus inside of them. We did that as DFO and the Province of BC were sitting on their hands and laughing at us for being a bunch of amateur hippies. Today they are laughing no more, instead they are on the run.

I am so immensely proud to have taken part (even so modestly) in this momentous effort. This sampling campaign represents direct action at its best. This is truly our finest hour.

Salmongate phase two

Dr. Gary Marty. Photo UC Davis

For the scientific establishment in charge of covering up the Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) trail, salmongate has just taken a turn for the worst. We have now learned that both government and scientists have known for over 10 years - you read that well - about the European strain of ISA roaming free in BC waters. But they elected to cover it up.

This report is from the Seattle Times. But expect to read many more similar articles in the coming hours and days:

 A decade before this fall's salmon-virus scare, a Canadian government researcher said she found a similar virus in more than 100 wild fish from Alaska to Vancouver Island.

Canadian officials never told the public or scientists in the United States about those tests — not even after evidence of the virus discovered in October was treated as an international emergency, according to documents and emails obtained by The Seattle Times.

The researcher's work surfaced only this week after she sought and was denied permission by a Canadian official to try to have her old data published in a scientific journal.

As we discover in complete disbelief those new headlines popping up around the world, we wonder what the scientific establishment's next move might possibly be.

I got a preview of that last week in an email conversation with Dr. Gary Marty, a senior fish pathologist with the Province of British Columbia. Their next move? They don't have one. They'll just keep denying ISA until they drop. As the trained superior minds that they are, they still believe that you can think a problem away.

Ironically, I initiated my conversation with Dr. Marty on a somewhat different (and retrospectively less explosive) topic than ISA's presence in BC. And it was he who self-defeatingly insisted on bringing our discussion back to the position that there is "no ISA in BC".

On October 31, I wrote an open letter to Dr. Marty in which I asked him to elaborate on a comment he had made while under oath at the Cohen Commission that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) “actually discourages us to test for international foreign animal diseases [such as ISA]. They prefer that they be called.”

That statement was a pretty big deal for me, because it suggested that the regulatory agencies in charge of protecting us against animal disease pandemics were at sleep at the wheel, sloppy, complacent, dismissive, negligent, or worse. So I wanted to hear directly from Dr. Marty what he actually meant with this comment.

Dr. Marty kindly responded to my letter by indicating that he was going on a two-week vacation but he remained confident that our farmed salmon "do not have ISA". Three weeks later, I had still not heard back from him. So I poked him again with an email on November 21. He responded with the following three points:

1. He advised me to contact CFIA directly with my questions.
2. He was in agreement with CFIA’s finding that there was "no confirmed case of ISA in BC".
3. He justified his position as follows: “When I see positive results for a disease not known to be in BC, in a species not known to be susceptible to the disease, and the fish had no clinical signs (or “classic lesions”) of the disease, I suspect that the results are false positives until proven otherwise.”

A disease not known to be in BC, in a species not known to be susceptible to the disease... Wow. Reading that statement in light of the Seattle Times article will get your head spinning. Dr. Marty was referring here to a batch of 48 fish sampled by Drs. Alexandra Morton and Rick Routledge, two of which had tested positive for ISA back in October. Marty was also telling me here that no classic lesions indicative of ISA were observed in any of those fish. But how would he know that? He was not in the field to make those observations when those particular fish were sampled.

But I stuck to my guns and brought Dr. Marty back onto my topic: "My specific questions were referring to some comments that you personally made on public record at the Cohen Commission. As such, my questions were addressed to you. The CFIA would not be in any position to comment on what you have said."

Dr. Marty replied by saying that he had some important work to do ("I have several other fish cases that require my attention"). He did find time, though, to drag me back yet again onto the topic of ISA being unconfirmed in BC, inviting me to meditate on the OIE's definition of what constitutes a virus outbreak. At that point I was growing a little impatient:

“Dear Dr. Marty, I am confused. You keep referring me back to the issue of whether or not the presence of ISA has been confirmed in British Columbia.” This, I insisted again, “does not constitute my questions.”

I waited for Dr. Marty's response but instead, I received an email from Dr. Paul Kitching, Provincial Chief Veterinary Officer, a man who had also denied the presence of ISA in a recent press conference. "Dear Ivan," he wrote, "Dr. Marty has asked me to respond to your email to allow him to catch up on his current workload." Referring to my questions to Dr. Marty, he wrote: "CFIA did not have any authority to stop us looking. ... at no time have they indicated that they do not want us to maintain our testing."

At last! Someone was answering my questions. The problem was that Kitching's response contradicted what Marty had said to Justice Cohen. So I wrote back to Kitching pointing him to that. His response:

Dear Ivan,

Thank you for your email. I regret that you are still confused, even though Dr. Marty and myself have done our best to answer your questions. I see no value in continuing this exchange.

Regards

Paul Kitching

And on that note, my conversation with those two eminent scientists came to an end.

This exchange obviously takes a particular meaning in the context of today's shattering headlines. Let's recap what we found:

• Dr. Gary Marty makes a pretty damning comment at the Cohen Commission suggesting that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency was at sleep at the wheel in its mandate to protect BC's ecosystems from foreign diseases. As we discover now that ISA has knowingly roamed BC for ten years or so, such negligence may be viewed as criminal.
• Dr. Marty's comment is indefensible, and when asked to explain himself, he does not even attempt to defend it. Rather, he chooses to respond on a completely different level - that there is "no ISA outbreak in BC". By this he implies that it really didn't matter that CFIA was dismissive and incompetent about the disease, since in his view that threat never materialized. The problem is that it did materialize, and it now appears that people in power (including some scientists) have known about it for ten years. 
• Marty's system of defense is consistent with that adopted by the CFIA, DFO, and the Province of BC which chose to co-organize a press conference a few weeks ago around the core message that "there is no ISA in BC". We now know that at least some people in some of those public agencies have know for at least some time (ten years) that this statement was factually false.
• The only way that our public agencies can now sustain their broken defense system that "there is no ISA in BC" is if they somehow manage to suppress any further independent testing performed on behalf of private citizens such as Alexandra Morton. And to their credit they have succeed in Canada, as in this country today, quite shamefully, no labs will accept any  samples from individuals and independent groups. But how do they intend to prevent other labs worldwide to conduct such tests? In particular, how do they plan to tame American labs after headlines such as those of the Seattle Times? 
• It is bewildering that a top gun scientist like Gary Marty would not hesitate to make unscientific statements to advance a point which turns out to be factually false. In this instance, he claimed that fish he never saw presented no lesions of ISA (unscientific statement) as a way of supporting his message that "there is no ISA in BC" (false statement).
• Finally, Dr. Marty and Dr. Kitching manifest yet again their utter contempt for the general public, not the least in the rudeness with which Kitching chose to bring my conversation with him to an end.

In a CBC Radio interview a few weeks ago, Dr. Marty made the following cocky, and also strangely prophetic, statement:

If I see problems with introduced pathogens or diseases, I will report them. That's actually part of my ethical responsibility as a veterinarian. If I don't report diseases like that that come in, I am subject to losing my career.

Putting your career on the line as you did on radio was brave but unwise, Dr. Marty. People may want to hold you to that pledge. Salmongate is unravelling at a breathtaking pace. It now appears you have failed to either discover or report those introduced pathogens for the past ten years. At best, that would make you incompetent. And at worst - well, unlike you, I will refrain from jumping to conclusions. That day when you choose to bring your career to an end may arrive sooner than you expected.

Email exchange with Dr. Gary Marty

From: Ivan Doumenc [ivan.doumenc@gmail.com]
Sent: October 31, 2011 12:51 PM
To: Marty, Gary D AGRI:EX
Subject: Open letter to Dr. Gary Marty, Fish Pathologist, BC Ministry of Agriculture & Lands

Dr. Gary Marty
Fish Pathologist
Animal Health Centre
BC Ministry of Agriculture & Lands

Gary.Marty@gov.bc.ca<mailto:Gary.Marty@gov.bc.ca>

CC: the public

October 31, 2011

Dear Dr. Marty,

I am a member of the general public living in Vancouver. Over the past couple years I have become increasingly involved in the conservation of wild salmon. But who I am is not very relevant.

On August 31, 2011, while you were on the witness stand at the Cohen Commission, you made a rather stunning comment: “CFIA [the Canadian Food Inspection Agency] actually discourages us to test for international foreign animal diseases. They prefer that they be called.”

Let me provide some context.

You were being cross-examined by Mr. Spiegelman, counsel for Canada, and the topic was a report that Dr. Alexandra Morton wrote to CFIA inquiring about some possible cases of infectious salmon anemia (ISA) that she had found in the Commission's disclosure database.

Those suspected cases of ISA, it appears, turned out to be false alarms since CFIA responded to Dr. Morton’s query on May 16, 2011 by stating that “All cases were evaluated as NO RISK for ISA”.

But then, Mr. Spiegelman asked you some follow-up questions about how you – as a fish pathologist for the Province of B.C. – dealt with the risk of ISA, and what was your level of confidence that B.C. was protected from that disease.

And you stated:

“Throughout the audit program, we test between 600 and 800 fish every year, since 2003, with a highly sensitive and specific PCR test, and those have been all negative. And so that gives me a great deal of confidence that we don't have ISAV in British Columbia.

So in several of these cases, it's not routine, when you have that level of confidence, it's not routine to always test for it when it's not known to occur, especially when you always have this active audit program going on. In fact, CFIA actually discourages us to test for international foreign animal diseases. They prefer that they be called.

So the fish health, because there weren't requirements from CFIA before January, we sort of have a grandfather-type system.”

Your comments, I take it, were intended to convey the reassuring message that the risk of ISA in British Columbia was so low that CFIA considered systematic testing to be somewhat redundant and unnecessary.

What a difference six weeks can make! Today, obviously, your comments convey a very different message – that the regulatory agencies in charge of protecting us against animal disease pandemics were at sleep at the wheel, sloppy, complacent, dismissive, negligent, or worse.

I have four specific questions for you and would appreciate a detailed and prompt response on your part, given that time is of the essence in this matter.

1. Does CFIA actually discourage veterinarians with the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture from conducting tests on foreign animal diseases such as ISA? Is a phone call really the preferred means of communication that this agency encourages, rather than rigorous and formal laboratory tests? How did/does that policy on the part of CFIA specifically impact your work as a veterinarian?

2.  When you said that “when you have that level of confidence, it's not routine to always test for [ISA] when it's not known to occur”, did you mean to say that you did not test potential cases of ISA systematically, or did you mean to say that you did perform those tests systematically in spite of CFIA encouraging you not to do that?

3. I assume that your “level of confidence” has been significantly downgraded by recent developments and that you now consider the disease situation in B.C. to be anything but “routine”. (Unless you would want to take the position that the two separate ISA tests performed by the OIE laboratory in Prince Edward Island are both faulty – in which case I will definitely want to hear your comments about that as well.) How do you intend to change/upgrade your own protocols and procedures to respond to the unfolding ISA crisis, now that you are no longer in “high confidence” territory?

4. Your comment “So the fish health, because there weren't requirements from CFIA before January, we sort of have a grandfather-type system” is unclear to me. I would appreciate if could elaborate on that.

Please provide any relevant documentation and/or explanations to support your answers.

In case you would want to dismiss my questions as being yet another overreaction from an uninformed member of the public, I would like to conclude by quoting from a letter by Dale Kelley, executive director of the Alaska Trollers Association, which was published in the Vancouver Sun this morning.

Her comments, I hope, will help convey to you the extreme level of urgency that the outside world places in this matter, as well as the potential dire consequences that inaction on the part of government – which you as a lead scientist represent – could involve:

“As the representative of Alaska fishermen who rely exclusively on the health of wild fish, I am appalled by the near-silence of the Canadian agencies responsible to protect them. I've reserved comment in hopes that they would send some signal to the public, and West Coast fishermen in particular, that Canada is proactively engaged with a "fish first" attitude.

On Friday Oct. 21 - more than a week after ISA was detected in B.C. salmon - Canadian officials issued a press release devoid of any sense of urgency. They announced they will run more tests, wait several weeks for results, and only then, if additional testing reveals ISA, stakeholders will be convened to, "identify and take appropriate next steps." Really?!”


Yours very truly,

Ivan Doumenc

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 3:23 PM, Marty, Gary D AGRI:EX <Gary.Marty@gov.bc.ca> wrote:

Dear Ivan,

   I am leaving for a 2-week holiday tomorrow, so I will not have time to provide a detailed answer.  I remain confident that our farm salmon do not have ISAV.  I await the results from CFIA's investigationn before I can comment on ISAV in wild salmon.  As for concerns in Alaska, the press release the state government released last week put things in perspective very well:

http://www.alaska-native-news.com/article/State_News/State_News/ADFG_Monitoring_Reported_Evidence_of_Disease_Exposure_in_BC_Sockeye_Salmon/23540

Sincerely,

Gary Marty

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Ivan Doumenc [mailto:ivan.doumenc@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, November 21, 2011 9:06 AM

To: Marty, Gary D AGRI:EX

Cc: Alexandra Morton
Subject: Re: Open letter to Dr. Gary Marty, Fish Pathologist, BC Ministry of Agriculture & Lands

Dear Dr. Marty,

I hope that you had a pleasant vacation.

I am wondering if you have found the time yet to provide detailed answers to my questions below. The results of the CFIA investigation are now in, although for my part I fail to see how those results are relevant to the specific questions I was asking you. So I trust that there is nothing preventing you from responding now.

Yours truly,

Ivan Doumenc

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 9:18 AM, Marty, Gary D AGRI:EX <Gary.Marty@gov.bc.ca> wrote:

Dear Ivan,

I am back from vacation.  Regarding questions about reporting of disease to CFIA, I recommend contacting CFIA directly.  The CFIA investigation is still ongoing, so it remains too soon to publicly comment on their results.  However, I can say that the results so far are consistent with my expectations.  When I see PCR positive results for a disease not known to be in BC, in a species not known to be susceptible to the disease, and the fish had no clinical signs (or “classis lesions”) lesions of the disease, I suspect that the PCR results are false positives until proven otherwise.  For more details, please see my response to Tyee Bridge at:

http://salmon-nation-and-the-dfo.blogspot.com/2011_11_01_archive.html

Sincerely,

Gary


Gary D. Marty, Fish Pathologist
Animal Health Centre
Ministry of Agriculture
1767 Angus Campbell Rd.
Abbotsford, BC, V3G 2M3
604-556-3123

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Ivan Doumenc [mailto:ivan.doumenc@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, November 21, 2011 9:57 AM

To: Marty, Gary D AGRI:EX
Cc: Alexandra Morton
Subject: Re: Open letter to Dr. Gary Marty, Fish Pathologist, BC Ministry of Agriculture & Lands

Thank you for your prompt reply.

Yes, I have read your responses to Tyee Bridge’s questions, which were on a related yet different topic.

My specific questions were referring to some comments that you personally made on public record at the Cohen Commission. As such, my questions were addressed to you. The CFIA would not be in any position to comment on what you have said.

For reference, I am pasting here the specific comments which you made at the Commission on August 31 and which I am referring to:

 “Throughout the audit program, we test between 600 and 800 fish every year, since 2003, with a highly sensitive and specific PCR test, and those have been all negative. And so that gives me a great deal of confidence that we don't have ISAV in British Columbia.

So in several of these cases, it's not routine, when you have that level of confidence, it's not routine to always test for it when it's not known to occur, especially when you always have this active audit program going on. In fact, CFIA actually discourages us to test for international foreign animal diseases. They prefer that they be called.

So the fish health, because there weren't requirements from CFIA before January, we sort of have a grandfather-type system.”

And my questions to you in relation to your comments at the Commission were the following:

1. Does CFIA actually discourage veterinarians with the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture from conducting tests on foreign animal diseases such as ISA? Is a phone call really the preferred means of communication that this agency encourages, rather than rigorous and formal laboratory tests? How did/does that policy on the part of CFIA specifically impact your work as a veterinarian?

2.  When you said that “when you have that level of confidence, it's not routine to always test for [ISA] when it's not known to occur”, did you mean to say that you did not test potential cases of ISA systematically, or did you mean to say that you did perform those tests systematically in spite of CFIA encouraging you not to do that?

3. I assume that your “level of confidence” has been significantly downgraded by recent developments and that you now consider the disease situation in B.C. to be anything but “routine”. (Unless you would want to take the position that the two separate ISA tests performed by the OIE laboratory in Prince Edward Island are both faulty – in which case I will definitely want to hear your comments about that as well.) How do you intend to change/upgrade your own protocols and procedures to respond to the unfolding ISA crisis, now that you are no longer in “high confidence” territory?

4. Your comment “So the fish health, because there weren't requirements from CFIA before January, we sort of have a grandfather-type system” is unclear to me. I would appreciate if could elaborate on that.

Your responses to Tyee Bridge did not address questions 1, 2, and 4 at all, and they only addressed question 3 indirectly. As such  I am still looking forward to reading your detailed responses to my questions at your earliest convenience.

Yours truly,

Ivan Doumenc

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 11:46 AM, Marty, Gary D AGRI:EX <Gary.Marty@gov.bc.ca> wrote:

Dear Ivan,

I have several other fish cases that require my attention before I can provide you with the requested detailed response.  In the meantime, consider investigating the difference between the 17 October 2011 SFU press release, “...Infectious Salmon Anaemia (ISA) has for the first time been officially reported after being found in the Pacific on B.C.’s central coast” and the OIE manual definition of a confirmed case (i.e., PCR test results alone are not sufficient evidence for confirmation of ISA):

Source: OIE CHAPTER 2.3.5. INFECTIOUS SALMON ANAEMIA (Cohen Exhibit #1676)

7.2. Definition of confirmed case

The following criteria in i) should be met for confirmation of ISA. The criteria given in ii) and iii) should be met for

the confirmation of ISAV infection.

i) Mortality, clinical signs and pathological changes consistent with ISA (Section 4.2), and detection of ISAV

in tissue preparations by means of specific antibodies against ISAV (IFAT on tissue imprints [Section

4.3.1.1.2] or fixed sections as described in Section 4.3.1.1.3) in addition to either:

a) isolation and identification of ISAV in cell culture from at least one sample from any fish on the farm,

as described in Section 4.3.1.2.1

or

b) detection of ISAV by RT-PCR by the methods described in Section 4.3.1.2.3;

ii) Isolation and identification of ISAV in cell culture from at least two independent samples (targeted or

routine) from any fish on the farm tested on separate occasions as described in Section 4.3.1.2.1;

iii) Isolation and identification of ISAV in cell culture from at least one sample from any fish on the farm with

corroborating evidence of ISAV in tissue preparations using either RT-PCR (Section 4.3.1.2.3) or IFAT

(Sections 4.3.1.1.2 and 4.3.1.1.3).



Sincerely,



Gary


Gary D. Marty, Fish Pathologist
Animal Health Centre
Ministry of Agriculture
1767 Angus Campbell Rd.
Abbotsford, BC, V3G 2M3
604-556-3123

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Ivan Doumenc [mailto:ivan.doumenc@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, November 21, 2011 1:40 PM

To: Marty, Gary D AGRI:EX

Cc: Alexandra Morton
Subject: Re: Open letter to Dr. Gary Marty, Fish Pathologist, BC Ministry of Agriculture & Lands

Dear Dr. Marty,

I am confused.

I greatly appreciate your answers, but you keep referring me back to the issue of whether or not the presence of ISAv has been confirmed in British Columbia.

While this critical issue obviously informs our ongoing conversation, this does not constitute my questions.

My questions to you are really procedural in nature. In your testimony before the Cohen Commission, you indicated that CFIA has discouraged you to test for international foreign animal diseases such as ISAv in the past, preferring that you give them a phone call instead.

This question of process is critical in assessing the level of protection which has been afforded to BC in regards to ISAv over the past few years. And in this matter, it is actually quite irrelevant whether or not ISAv was confirmed in BC.

Said otherwise, I would have asked you the same questions regarding your comments at the Commission, even if no laboratory had found any ISAv positives. Obviously, the fact that two labs did find positives of ISAv (or false positives, as you and CFIA have stated) has made this question all the more urgent.

But by responding to my questions about the processes in place between you and CFIA by stating that there are no cases of ISAv in BC, you are missing the point of my questions.

I apologize for insisting. But my questions do stand. Please read them again, and hopefully it will appear to you that, indeed, you have not responded to them yet.

Also, you mention that you must attend to other work. While I fully understand and accept that, please note that my request was initially sent to you on October 31, about three weeks ago.  I would appreciate if at one point you did find time in your busy schedule to respond to my questions. Perhaps if you could provide me with an ETA, it would help?

Yours very truly,

Ivan Doumenc

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 4:14 PM, Kitching, Paul AGRI:EX <Paul.Kitching@gov.bc.ca> wrote:

Dear Ivan

Dr Marty has asked me to respond to your e mail to allow him to catch up on his current work load. I will reply to each of your questions – see below

1.
CFIA is responsible for the diagnosis of all federally reportable diseases, such as notifiable avian influenza and foot and mouth disease. This year certain fish diseases such as ISA were added to the list of federally reportable diseases. Our laboratory has until recently been responsible for the fish health program (until the transfer to DFO last year). This surveillance program required and entitled us to look for any pathogen, including ISA. CFIA did not have any authority to stop us looking. Now that ISA is a federally reportable disease, we are obliged to inform CFIA of any suspect cases, but at no time have they indicated that they do not want us to maintain our testing.

2.    
This statement refers to how we handle routine samples submitted directly by the fish farm veterinarians.  Some veterinarians request a PCR test for ISAV in nearly every submission to us; their goal is to establish a record that they are free from ISAV.  In contrast, other veterinarians will test only when they see clinical signs and mortality patterns consistent with ISA (this has not yet happened in BC), or when required before fish transfer.  Because our comprehensive auditing program gives a high degree of confidence that BC farm salmon are free from ISAV, the decision to ask or not ask for ISAV PCR is based on sound scientific principals and, therefore, both choices constitute “best practices” in veterinary medicine.  We do not test every fish for every disease as it would be too expensive and totally unnecessary. The point of doing the initial histopathology screening is to narrow the number of specific laboratory tests required. In the same way your doctor makes a physical examination before requesting additional laboratory tests

3.    
If you look at the notes associated with the test results from the PEI laboratory you will see that they indicate that additional tests are required for a positive ISA diagnosis. To my knowledge no additional tests have confirmed the presence of ISA. It also says “the presence of ISAV sequences in the tissue samples does not imply that the subject fish had ISA.”

It is essential to sequence the PCR product to ensure that it is actually ISAV sequence or is not a cross contaminant in the laboratory or from elsewhere. This was not done. The PEI laboratory is the only laboratory that has been consistently able to find ISAV like sequences in pacific salmon. I and the OIE need more convincing evidence that ISAV is in BC, although we will continue to look for it in samples when we consider it appropriate. If it is here, causing mortality in fish, it will not be difficult to find.

4.    
The point here is that because we have been carrying out ISA testing for so long, CFIA have no objection to us continuing the testing, provided we inform them of any suspicious results.

I hope this is helpful

Paul Kitching

Director Plant and Animal Health, Provincial Chief Veterinary Officer

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Ivan Doumenc [mailto:ivan.doumenc@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, November 22, 2011 12:36 PM
To: Kitching, Paul AGRI:EX
Cc: Marty, Gary D AGRI:EX; Alexandra Morton
Subject: Re: FW: Open letter to Dr. Gary Marty, Fish Pathologist, BC Ministry of Agriculture & Lands

Dear Dr. Kitching,

Thank you very much for your kind response. I greatly appreciate that you would accept to fill in for Dr. Marty as he catches up with his work.

Let me ask you my follow-up questions in the order of my initial questions:

1.

You wrote: “at no time have [CFIA] indicated that they do not want us to maintain our testing.”

This statement appears to contradict the statement made by Dr. Marty at the Cohen Commission when he said: “CFIA actually discourages us to test for international foreign animal diseases. They prefer that they be called.”

The word “discourage” has a very specific meaning in the English language. According to the Free Online Dictionary:

dis•cour•age
1. To deprive of confidence, hope, or spirit.
2. To hamper by discouraging; deter.
3. To try to prevent by expressing disapproval or raising objections.

And so, if we accept Dr. Marty’s testimony at face value, it appears that CFIA did attempt to hamper, deter, or prevent him from conducting tests on ISAv and other foreign diseases.

Now I understand that appearances may sometimes be deceiving and so, I wanted Dr. Marty to perhaps clarify and qualify the statement he made on public record. And I would understand that it may be difficult for you to make such clarifications on his behalf, since you did not make those statements yourself.

Also, your response does not address the specific comment made by Dr. Marty at the Commission that CFIA would rather “prefer that they be called” instead of having Dr. Marty’s team conduct formal laboratory tests for ISAv.

Those are very striking comments which members of the public such as myself cannot take lightly. Your response in that regard remains too general to address Dr. Marty’s comments. Which is why I was – and still am – specifically asking Dr. Marty to elaborate on them.

2.

You wrote: ‘We do not test every fish for every disease as it would be too expensive and totally unnecessary. The point of doing the initial histopathology screening is to narrow the number of specific laboratory tests required.”

Again, this appears to contradict a statement made by Dr. Marty on CBC Radio on October 18, when he said in reference to ISAv: “every one of our fish that we sample is also tested with a highly specific PCR test, and those tests have consistently and 100% been negative, so there is no virus there.” I have also heard Dr. Marty refer on several occasions that all 4,700 fish included in the Province’s  Fish Health Auditing and Surveillance Program had indeed been tested for ISAv using a highly specific and sensitive PCR test.

So I am confused. Did your laboratory ISAv -test all the fish that you routinely sampled, or not? That is why I was hoping that Dr. Marty could clarify this confusion for me. As it stands, your response makes things even more difficult for me to understand, since it sends the conflicting message that you did not perform those systematic tests, contrary to what Dr. Marty stated.

I have two additional follow-up questions to my initial second question which for its part remains unaddressed:

2 (a)

I understand that PCR tests look only at highly specific portions of the virus, meaning that if the wrong test is used, specific strains of ISA can be missed, or that if only a specific type of ISA is tested (such as the North American strain) other types (such as the European strain) can be missed altogether.

And so I was planning to ask Dr. Marty what exact type of PCR did he use on those 4,700 fish. Was it a PCR test specifically looking for ISAv? And if so, was it for the European strain, or the North American strain? If you are able to respond to this on Dr. Marty’s behalf I would be very grateful, otherwise I will have to address this back to him.

2 (b)

In his initial response to me (Nov. 21), Dr. Marty referred to the 48 salmon that Dr. Morton and Dr. Routledge have sent to he PEI lab for testing, and we wrote: “the fish had no clinical signs (or “classic lesions”) lesions of the disease”. This is consistent with a statement that Dr. Marty also made to the Journal of American Veterinary Medical Association on November 16 that “none of the [48 sockeye salmon smolts] had signs consistent with the disease”.

I was wondering how Dr. Marty would know that. Was he able to inspect/diagnose the 48 fish that were sampled by Dr. Morton? If not, how did he determine that those fish had no “classic lesions” associated with ISAv?

3.

Should I conclude from your response here that your agency has taken no steps / made no plans to change your processes and protocols after ISAv (albeit a false positive, as CFIA has stated) was reported by Dr. Kibenge’s OIE laboratory last month?

You also wrote that “we will continue to look for [ISAv] in samples when we consider it appropriate. If it is here, causing mortality in fish, it will not be difficult to find.” Does this mean that you have found it appropriate to increase the number of fish samples for 2011? Or that you have found it appropriate not to increase your sampling activity?

4.    

Thank you for your response, this clarifies that point for me.


Thank you again for your interest in this matter.

Yours truly,
Ivan Doumenc

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 1:07 PM, Kitching, Paul AGRI:EX <Paul.Kitching@gov.bc.ca> wrote:

Dear Ivan,

Thankyou for your email. I regret that you are still confused, even though Dr Marty and myself have done our best to answer your questions. I see no value in continuing this exchange.

Regards

Paul Kitching

Salmongate

(Meanwhile, Alex Morton and her team are busy sampling wild salmon throughout BC. 

This was taken today at the Nanaimo River.)  Photo Don Staniford.

There are special times in the history of government when a scandal is so far-reaching, so undeniable, so universally despised, that it receives the suffix of “gate”. A time of deep connivance between people, really, when the mere evocation of a public agency’s name is enough to provoke collective laughter, shrugs, and bemused what the hell were they thinking looks. We are at one of those junctures. We are about to enter salmongate.

On Tuesday, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) gave a surreal press conference to announce to the world that the Infectious Salmon Anemia virus outbreak was not happening in British Columbia. The CFIA was assisted in this dangerous enterprise by the usual suspects, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Province of British Columbia.

Dr. Con Kiley, Director of National Aquatic Animal Health at the CFIA, announced that his agency had tested the 48 samples used in previous tests and that all of them were negative for ISA. There is no evidence that ISA occurs in fish off the waters of British Columbia(*), he concluded with a confident voice intended at subduing the assembled media.

Dr. Kiley’s seduction attempt did not succeed. He was met instead with a barrage of hard questions by a very skeptical bunch of journalists. A reporter from the Seattle Times asked some of the most relevant questions of the conference as he tried to piece together the contradictory information he was receiving from his various sources:

Q: You say all tests are negative. But Dr. Nylund from the reference laboratory in Norway told me in an email that the samples suggest ISA is present. Explain this discrepancy.

A: We would consider his report as inconclusive. We would consider that to be negative, because it was not repeatable. Dr. Nylund got only one positive from multiple tests on one sample. And he said it was not reproducible. So technically, according to CFIA standards, it is negative.

Like a compromised fish sample, the quality of the government’s message degraded rapidly. They had started with the solid, simple line that all results were negative. Then, under journalistic pressure, they retreated to a very different and much more complex place, that the results were actually inconclusive. And then, they moved to the realm of the incomprehensible, by stating that a positive could technically be read as a negative. They were losing their grip over their media conference. But then it got much worse for them, as the journalist from the Seattle Times continued:

Q: Do you plan to share those samples with research labs in the US?

A: What would be the point? The problem is that the quality of the samples is partially or totally degraded. We received them in poor condition. Sharing these samples would not be good science.

Q: Does this comment apply to the samples collected more recently in the Fraser River as well?

A: This is true for the majority - for all - the samples. Some were collected in June and stored at minus 20 degrees. So it's inconclusive. Sharing these samples would be pointless.

To tell an American reporter that it is “pointless” to hand over samples to American labs because that would not be “good science” even though those could hold the key to a direct threat to American fisheries, and that therefore the only option for Americans in this matter is to trust a Canadian bureaucracy – even though a Norwegian scientist has said otherwise – is truly a form of media suicide. I cannot wait to read tomorrow morning’s Seattle Times article.

A reporter from Yukon News ventured to ask: are you planning to do any further tests up North in the Yukon? Dr. Kiley gave a response for the books: No, we only do our investigations in Canadian waters. Well last time I checked, Yukon was still part of Canada, she was quick to reply. Ah OK, well no – we have no plans for further testing up North, he said dismissively as if his response contained its self-evident justification.

Damien Gillis from the Common Sense Canadian concluded the press conference with a line of questioning which captured the general sentiment and provided a perfect wrap-up:

Q: What do you make of the precautionary principle?

A: We take any finding of disease very seriously.

Q: It did not sound like it today, though.

A: We use science as our guiding principle in all things. And right now, we can say there is no evidence of ISA in British Columbia.

Q: What you just stated right now is actually the opposite of the precautionary principle.

A: We take it all seriously, that's all I can say.

Where were they hoping to go with this? Because meanwhile, Dr. Alexandra Morton and her team are busy sampling hundreds of wild salmon around British Columbia. When new positives of ISA start coming in (and sadly, they will), how will the CFIA respond after what they have told the media today? They have painted themselves into a corner.

This disastrous media conference is not an isolated incident but instead the latest episode in a long chain of cover-ups, media blunders, and first magnitude screw-ups which indicate that the lid is about to come off in Canada’s salmongate. Here is a quick recap:

• Back in September, it was revealed at the Cohen Commission that Dr. Kristi Miller’s work on salmon leukemia was being directly controlled by the Prime Minister’s Office in Ottawa. In particular, the PMO intervened to ban Miller from responding to media requests in the days leading to the publication of her research in the prestigious journal Science.
• At Cohen, we also discovered that DFO had cut off all funding – that’s zero dollars – for Dr. Miller’s critical research on salmon. To our knowledge, the funding still remains cut off to this day.
• When the first positive results of ISA were discovered, The Provincial Government made the accusation that the original samples that tested positive had been destroyed. In an ironically self-defeating comment (since it was later confirmed that the samples were fine), Liberal MLA. D. McRae said in the BC Legislature: “Well, we've got another example of spinning media headlines and fear mongering from the opposition.”
• Around the same time, Province-of-BC lead veterinarian Dr. Gary Marty was asked by CBC Radio about the multiple cases of jaundiced salmon that Alexandra Morton had found in the Fraser River with heavily diseased livers. With a straight face, he answered that those may have been (wait wait wait) albino fish. What about their diseased livers? Ah yeah, albino fish with a drinking problem, I guess.
• And now, this press conference from another planet by the CFIA.

I am seriously running out of space to relate in detail all the major and minor mistakes that government reps have made as they scramble to cover up the ISA trail. At least, the salmon farming industry is being smart by mostly keeping its mouth shut about all of this and letting government take the lead in appearing as complete fools. When events create a feeling of laughter, ridicule, and anger at he same time, this is the first clue that the people in charge of the cover-up are going in a panic and losing their grip over reality. If one goes by the above list, we have definitely reached that place.

What’s perhaps most troubling in this sad matter is how lead government scientists – not just politicians – have weighed into the balance and come up with such absurd and callous comments as those uttered by Dr. Marty or Dr. Kiley.

May this be a reminder that the scientific elite is a key partner in this salmon-industrial complex, working hand in hand with industry and government in perpetuating the status quo. And so, the scientific elite’s governance over our scientific matters will come to an end as well, when salmongate explodes.

(*) Quotes are based on my personal notes during the press conference. To indicate that those quotes come from notes rather than an actual recording, I have reproduced them here in italics without using quotes.

Open letter to Dr. Gary Marty

Dr. Gary Marty. 

Photo UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine

Dr. Gary Marty

Fish Pathologist

Animal Health Centre

BC Ministry of Agriculture & Lands

Gary.Marty@gov.bc.ca

CC: the public

October 31, 2011

Dear Dr. Marty,

I am a member of the general public living in Vancouver. Over the past couple years I have become increasingly involved in the conservation of wild salmon. But who I am is not very relevant.

On August 31, 2011, while you were on the witness stand at the Cohen Commission, you made a rather stunning comment: “CFIA [the Canadian Food Inspection Agency] actually discourages us to test for international foreign animal diseases. They prefer that they be called.”

Let me provide some context.

You were being cross-examined by Mr. Spiegelman, counsel for Canada, and the topic was a report that Dr. Alexandra Morton wrote to CFIA inquiring about some possible cases of infectious salmon anemia (ISA) that she had found in the Commission's disclosure database.

Those suspected cases of ISA, it appears, turned out to be false alarms since CFIA responded to Dr. Morton’s query on May 16, 2011 by stating that “All cases were evaluated as NO RISK for ISA”.

But then, Mr. Spiegelman asked you some follow-up questions about how you – as a fish pathologist for the Province of B.C. – dealt with the risk of ISA, and what was your level of confidence that B.C. was protected from that disease.

And you stated:

“Throughout the audit program, we test between 600 and 800 fish every year, since 2003, with a highly sensitive and specific PCR test, and those have been all negative. And so that gives me a great deal of confidence that we don't have ISAV in British Columbia.

So in several of these cases, it's not routine, when you have that level of confidence, it's not routine to always test for it when it's not known to occur, especially when you always have this active audit program going on. In fact, CFIA actually discourages us to test for international foreign animal diseases. They prefer that they be called.

So the fish health, because there weren't requirements from CFIA before January, we sort of have a grandfather-type system.”

Your comments, I take it, were intended to convey the reassuring message that the risk of ISA in British Columbia was so low that CFIA considered systematic testing to be somewhat redundant and unnecessary.

What a difference six weeks can make! Today, obviously, your comments convey a very different message – that the regulatory agencies in charge of protecting us against animal disease pandemics were at sleep at the wheel, sloppy, complacent, dismissive, negligent, or worse.

I have four specific questions for you and would appreciate a detailed and prompt response on your part, given that time is of the essence in this matter.

1.       Does CFIA actually discourage veterinarians with the B.C. Ministry of Agriculture from conducting tests on foreign animal diseases such as ISA? Is a phone call really the preferred means of communication that this agency encourages, rather than rigorous and formal laboratory tests? How did/does that policy on the part of CFIA specifically impact your work as a veterinarian?

2.       When you said that “when you have that level of confidence, it's not routine to always test for [ISA] when it's not known to occur”, did you mean to say that you did not test potential cases of ISA systematically, or did you mean to say that you did perform those tests systematically in spite of CFIA encouraging you not to do that?

3.       I assume that your “level of confidence” has been significantly downgraded by recent developments and that you now consider the disease situation in B.C. to be anything but “routine”. (Unless you would want to take the position that the two separate ISA tests performed by the OIE laboratory in Prince Edward Island are both faulty – in which case I will definitely want to hear your comments about that as well.) How do you intend to change/upgrade your own protocols and procedures to respond to the unfolding ISA crisis, now that you are no longer in “high confidence” territory?

4.       Your comment “So the fish health, because there weren't requirements from CFIA before January, we sort of have a grandfather-type system” is unclear to me. I would appreciate if could elaborate on that.

Please provide any relevant documentation and/or explanations to support your answers.

In case you would want to dismiss my questions as being yet another overreaction from an uninformed member of the public, I would like to conclude by quoting from a letter by Dale Kelley, executive director of the Alaska Trollers Association, which was published in the Vancouver Sun this morning.

Her comments, I hope, will help convey to you the extreme level of urgency that the outside world places in this matter, as well as the potential dire consequences that inaction on the part of government – which you as a lead scientist represent – could involve:

“As the representative of Alaska fishermen who rely exclusively on the health of wild fish, I am appalled by the near-silence of the Canadian agencies responsible to protect them. I've reserved comment in hopes that they would send some signal to the public, and West Coast fishermen in particular, that Canada is proactively engaged with a "fish first" attitude.

On Friday Oct. 21 - more than a week after ISA was detected in B.C. salmon - Canadian officials issued a press release devoid of any sense of urgency. They announced they will run more tests, wait several weeks for results, and only then, if additional testing reveals ISA, stakeholders will be convened to, "identify and take appropriate next steps." Really?!”

Yours very truly,

Ivan Doumenc

ISA pandemic in BC

Alexandra Morton speaking at a press conference at SFU last week.

The New York Times reports on a second case of ISA - this time in coho salmon in the Fraser River system.

Brace, people. We have an ISA pandemic in BC.

In rivers, streams, and coastlines, people are collecting salmon samples and sending them for virus testing - because the government won't do it.

And every time we test, we will find more positives of that virus. And more. And more.

Until the structure collapses under the weight of its own incompetence and corruption. We will see the end of a mode of governance.

DFO as an institution is finished. Large transnational fish farm corporations will flee the country in shame, leaving ecosystems in ruin. And the Province of BC will lose whatever may be left of its legitimacy.

It's called the salmon revolution.

May the wild salmon survive this terrible, yet necessary, crisis.

---

Virus in Pacific Salmon Raises Worries About Industry

By WILLIAM YARDLEY

Published: October 28, 2011

Advocates for wild salmon said Friday that a deadly virus had been detected again in a Pacific salmon in British Columbia, but it was not clear if it would prove lethal to the fish population.

The finding, like one involving two juvenile wild sockeye salmon in British Columbia, poses questions for the viability of salmon fisheries in Canada and the United States. Scientists have expressed concern about the emergence of the virus while raising questions about complications, including scientific doubts about the quality of the tests.

In its active state, the virus, infectious salmon anemia, has devastated Atlantic salmon populations in fish farms in Chile and elsewhere. Salmon advocates have long worried that the virus could spread to wild populations, but it not clear whether Pacific salmon are equally susceptible.

In documents released Friday, an adult coho salmon supplied by salmon advocates to a prominent laboratory showed signs of carrying the disease. That fish was reported to have been found in a tributary of the Fraser River, a critical salmon run for fishermen in Canada and the United States.

Last week, researchers from Simon Fraser University in British Columbia and elsewhere said that they had discovered the virus in 2 of 48 juvenile fish collected as part of a study of sockeye salmon in Rivers Inlet, on the central coast of British Columbia. The study was undertaken after scientists observed a decline in the number of young sockeye.

Such a virus could have a deep impact on the survival of salmon in the Pacific Northwest. Some scientists have suggested that the virus had spread from British Columbia’s aquaculture industry, which has imported millions of Atlantic salmon eggs over the last 25 years.

Salmon farms and wild fish are separated only by a net, many have noted. No treatment exists for the virus, which does not spread to humans, scientists say.

The crowded conditions of salmon farms are thought to abet the spread of the virus.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/science/pacific-salmon-virus-raises-worries-about-industry.html