salmon warriors

Mainstream Canada loses it

2012-03-10T20:53:00.001-08:00

Watch and share widely. This clip appeared on CTV News on March 9.

We see Laurie Jensen from fish farm giant Mainstream Canada lose her cool and brutally push a peaceful protester during an anti-fish farm gathering in Campbell River last Thursday. The protester being pushed back is Rod Marining, and it's pretty clear on the footage that he's acting completely peacefully, even after he's been shoved back.

Mainstream's Laurie Jensen then turns around and starts threatening... a member of the Parliament of Norway which she mistook for a protester. CTV's anchorman says Mainstream Canada was not available for comment over that incident.

Mainstream's Laurie Jansen in an altercation with Norwegian MP Per Sandberg

Mainstream Canada is that same corporation which sued Don Staniford for defamation, another complete PR disaster for them.

Mainstream Canada is in meltdown mode, committing one blunder after another. They are on the ropes and they know it.

Wild salmon people were in Campbell River last Thursday to enforce democracy. The industry had invited a Norwegian delegation to meet First Nations in support of fish farms. But the organizers had carefully weeded out all First Nations who were in opposition. Among them was Chief Bob Chamberlin of the Kwicksutaineuk Ah-Kwa-mish First Nation, who turned up uninvited in full regalia and demanded to be admitted to the conference.

Thanks to the people who came to give him their support, the organizers had no choice but allow Bob Chamberlin into the conference.

Laurie Jensen's behavior is not an isolated act. It's part of a corporate culture.

Honor to the wild salmon people who were in Campbell River. You have exposed this corporation for what it is - a bully which brutally pushes people around whenever they disagree.

The fight continues.

Mainstream's cancer

2012-02-11T12:39:00.000-08:00

Don Staniford. Photo Anissa Reed

In the lawsuit opposing fish farm giant Mainstream Canada to DonStaniford, a key battle was fought over the issue of cancer. In his cigarette packs campaign,Staniford made several references to cancer, stating for example that "salmon farming is a cancer on thecoast".

Mainstreamwas not amused, and focused the bulk of its attack against Staniford on thosecancerous messages. David Wotherspoon, Mainstream's lawyer, partly justifiedhis application for a last-minute injunction against Don Staniford on thosegrounds, suggesting that equating fish farms to big tobacco caused irreparabledamage to the industry's reputation in the eyes of the public as acancer-inducing machine. As such, he demanded from the judge a particularlyharsh remedy: an immediate and permanent injunction, whereby Don Staniford "shall be restrained from publishingany defamatory statement referring in any way to the plaintiff", alongwith damages of up to one million dollars.

Examineda few days earlier by the lawyers on this matter, Staniford had given thefollowing explanations: "Cancerrefers to multiple things. Literally, cancer can refer to the cancer-causingchemicals. We’ve had extensive peer-reviewed evidence on carcinogens in farmedsalmon. But also the method of the spread of cancer, the spread of infectiousdiseases. ...the analogy would be thatcages are like cells – they are like cancer cells at the mouths of rivers. Sowe need to rip out that cancer. ...Weneed to tackle the root causes of the cancer, not just treat the symptoms. Sothat means removing salmon farms from our coast."

Membersof the public who were attending the trial were quick to pick up on this cancercontroversy. Not only were Staniford's cancer messages grounded in science,they also carried a strong metaphorical meaning that greatly appealed to them.On the last day of the trial yesterday, as the lawyers were battling over Mainstream’sinjunction, a group of Don's supporters gathered at a coffee shop during lunchrecess and started writing small hand-held banners. The theme was to includethe word "mainstream" in each banner's text. People were being verycreative. Some of the banners said: "Hasfalsifying facts now gone mainstream?" "Since when has ruininglivelihoods become mainstream?" "Is freedom of speech no longermainstream?", etc. You get the idea.

Oneof the banners read: "Why has cancerbecome mainstream?"

Thatslogan was put to immediate use that same day when the trial reconvened afterlunch. The courtroom was filled to capacity and overflowing to the point wherethe judge had to play sheriff for a few minutes, martially telling members ofthe public to either find themselves a seat or get out of the room. We were allwondering about a lady in black who was sitting in a corner and who appearedmore interested in the crowd than in the case itself. She was staring at eachof us individually one by one, as if to memorize our faces, sometimes standingup so that she could see us better. I was later told that her name was NancySeymour and that she was a lawyer representing Mainstream.

Shespent the afternoon checking the Salmon Are Sacred Facebook page, looking ather computer then looking back at the audience, in an apparent attempt tolocate people who were posting live on Facebook. Was she trying to put names onfaces? But she could have asked us. Or was she compiling a list of peopledisobeying the judge's order not to use communication devices in court? Itdidn't seem to bother her, however, that by doing so she was directly violatingthat order herself.

Iwas not the only one annoyed by this woman's behavior. As she snooped around,one of Don's friends decided to send her a message by stating aloud in herdirection: "Why has cancer become mainstream?" as a way of letting her know that, actually, we werewatching her too.

Meanwhile,the Mainstream lawyers were working hard to convince the judge that anunusually draconian injunction was required in the case of Don Staniford. Anorder such as this one certainly is a strong message, one of the lawyersexplained, adding that its main purpose would be to set an example. It wouldshift the responsibility back onto the defendant, he added. Mainstream was thusdemanding that the onus of the proof be put on the defendant rather than theplaintiff - a fundamental violation of a core tenet of the rule of law in thiscountry. With such an injunction in place, all that Mainstream would have to dois sue Don Staniford as soon as he published anything, and then sit back andforce him to prove his innocence. Amazingly,the judge listened patiently to that absurd line of argumentation without evenflinching, when she really should have laughed the lawyer out of the courtroom.

Thejudge must have sensed, however, that there was something terribly wrong withthis reasoning, because at the end of the day she unexpectedly decided to bailout, announcing that she was reserving her judgement until further notice.

Aftercourt, about thirty of us met in a downtown pub. After 20 days of repressedtension inside the courtroom, we let the steam out a little. Beer was flowingfreely, we acted silly, told dirty jokes, made fun of each other. Don wasobviously one of the centers of attention, being the hero of the day and all,and we took turns in spilling our beer into his and exchanging not-so-profoundthoughts with him.

For whatever reason, at that moment I remembered my firstencounter with Don. It was about a couple years ago, on a sunny day at Jericho Beachduring a wild salmon rally. I had known the virtual Don for some time alreadythrough our facebooks and had become a great admirer of his work as anorganizer while he was still working in Europe. I introduced myself. You'reIvan! I love your blog, he said. I remember standing on that beach beaming andthinking - wow, the guy actually reads my blog. And we started chatting aboutsalmon, rugby and people we both knew, as if we had been old acquaintances. Itwas instant friendship.

Itstruck me then, as it does now, how incredibly approachable Don is - making himselfavailable to everyone in all circumstances, including in times of intensepersonal stress. Even though he is clearly cut out of a different cloth thanthe rest of us and has a vision, focus and drive in this campaign that we canonly guess, last night at the pub Don simply blended in. An outsider would nothave guessed in whose honor this pub party was being thrown. Don-the-hero wasjust another guy. Your friendly neighbor spiderman, who has just saved theworld but doesn't even stop to give it a second thought. And thatcharacteristic is critical in understanding the resilience of our movement, andwhy corporations such as Mainstream cannot root us out no matter how hard theytry.

Becauselast night at the pub, Don was only one half of the story. The other half wasall those new faces that I was staring at and whose names I couldn't even registeryet. Where did all these people come from? People that we did not see aroundonly a couple months ago, yet people who had showed up religiously at Don's 20-day long trial.The funny thing was that already, even though I was still struggling tomemorize the names, I was finding it hard to remember who was "new"and who wasn't in that bunch. Such is the power of that formidable melting pot, alcohol intoxication. And such, too, is the culture of this group.Just like Don, those new faces had simply blended in and were being silly withthe rest of us, sometimes sillier. Because you see, there is no such notion asseniority in this movement. Whether you've been around for five years or a weekdoes not matter a bit, you're part of the family as long as you keep showingup.

All those new faces are Mainstream's gift to the cause, the industry'scontribution to building our movement. That’s what they have achieved by suing Don. NancySeymour, the woman-in-black in charge of maintaining our inventory in thecourtroom, is going to be busy in weeks and months to come, as we keepdiscovering new faces every time we gather.

Intwo weeks time, we lose Don as he gets deported to Europe. This was a carefullyorchestrated move by the government of Canada, made to coincide withthe opening of Don's trial, a way of indicating without any possible doubtthe political motivation of this act. My heart aches at that thought. But weare gaining new friends every day. Mainstream may think they have cut off oneof our movement's heads by getting Don on a plane. But every time they cut offa head, seven regrow in its place. So keep cutting, gentlemen.

Itmay be true, as our friend told Nancy Seymour in the courtroom, that cancer hasgone mainstream. But we have also become Mainstream's own cancer. We havemetastasized. More of us appear from nowhere every day, and the people sent tomonitor us are clueless about how to contain our cancerous growth. They thoughtthey were being smart by sending Don out of the country. Instead, they areopening a new beach head by handing him on a golden plate his next careeropportunity in Norway. Indeed, days after his deportation order was announced,Norway's Green Warriors (the bad-ass equivalent of our own Sea Shepherds) calledDon to offer him a job!

I'mheartbroken to lose my friend, but by God! am I excited about the prospectsoffered by Don's relocation to Europe. Global salmon farming coordinator forGreen Warriors of Norway, in a paid salaried position nonetheless? Just imaginethe results he will achieve there, with the knowledge, network, and experiencehe has accumulated here in B.C.

Fromthe shores of Norway, Don is going to coordinate us, give us the big picture,grow us into a truly global movement. Gonna miss you, Don. But I'm so lookingforward to working with you.

The force of anger

2012-01-19T13:18:00.000-08:00

Betty Krawczyk. Don Staniford.

[ I am republishing a blog post which I wrote over a year ago, in October 2010. It was about Betty Krawczyk's latest legal battle against government and industry over the protection of our ecosystems.

How not to think of Don Staniford and his ongoing battle against fish farm giant Mainstream Canada when reading this?

The specific contexts in Don's and Betty's cases are different, obviously. But this feels so relevant that I decided to re-post it without any change. I also added Don's picture next to Betty's original one to symbolize the linkage.

This is to you, Don and Betty. ]

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

First posted October 22, 2010

Last September, Crown Counsel took veteran environmental activist Betty Krawczyk to a new level in her struggle with the BC legal system. She is now facing – at least in theory – the prospect of life in prison for having temporarily and non-violently stood in the way of trucks and heavy machinery. To that effect, Crown Counsel has submitted two rulings to the court involving repeat violent pedophiles who had raped their own children, indicating that those rulings were relevant to Betty's case. That's quite an irony when one considers that this grandmother has spent her golden years standing up against large corporations which were raping the environment.

A few days ago, Crown Counsel announced that in the BC Rail corruption trial, it had reached a guilty plea deal with the defendants, and therefore the case was closed before Gordon Campbell and his former finance minister Gary Collins could be called to testify. For some detailed analysis of this development, I refer you to Rafe Mair's indispensable and surgical daily blog. The two defendants, Basi and Virk, are reported to have signed a non-disclosure agreement with the Crown whereby they are contractually obligated to take to the grave the secrets of this case. In its wisdom, the Crown also found it appropriate to stick the BC taxpayer with the defendants' legal bills in the amount of $6 million.

Each of these announcements is stunning in its own right, but they take their full significance when put in resonance with one another. Together, they underscore the growing rift between the ruling class' infinite leniency towards itself, and its extreme severity and growing repressive stance towards ordinary citizens.

Such moves by the Attorney General's office are usually carefully calculated. In the case involving Betty, the goal is to send a chill wave through the activist community by making an example of a high-profile iconic figure. The calculation is that this obvious overkill on the part of the Crown will (a) feed our instinct of fear and increase our general sense of powerlessness and apathy, and (b) possibly set a useful legal precedent in the event that new generations of radicalized Betties would come of age.

And indeed, if it were carried through, the Crown's threat against Betty would probably be successful in achieving that goal. Increased repression and criminalization of nonviolent and non-criminal acts of civil disobedience does cause well-meaning people to pause and think harder about the consequences of their actions before they act. Who wants to go to jail for 10 months – let alone a lifetime – for holding back a bunch of construction trucks for a week or two? Certainly not me.

And yet, how little does the elite class understand the laws of dialectics! Clearly, they do not see that through their actions they are awakening and enabling the very monster that they are trying to keep locked away. They are, in their mode of reasoning, the tributaries of formal logic. In their worldview, something can never be simultaneously something else. People are either scared or they are not. They are either apathetic or politically active. If you successfully scare them into a state of apathy, you have by all measures accomplished your mission, case closed. Sometimes after a time of relative calm people grow agitated again, and so then you scare them again by stepping up the repression by a couple notches. Causes are followed by effects. A simple world, really.

In contrast dialectics, which can be defined as the study of the general laws of motion, describes the permanent state of change of things - which are, quite literally, always simultaneously themselves and something else. One huge practical benefit of dialectics as a methodology is that it is adept in all things contradictory. Whereas formal logic is incapable of explaining contradiction and generally dismisses it as a form of error, dialectics thrives on it. The dialectician actively seeks contradiction everywhere, sees it always as an opportunity and never as a problem, reads in its distinct pattern an indication that change is about to occur - that things are about to be set in motion.

Well folks – things are about to be set in motion. The elite class' contradictory treatment of the rule of law, their ridiculous leniency towards themselves paired with their increasingly repressive stance towards the rest of us, throws us, in turn, into a deep state of contradiction. We are deeply conflicted between our growing fear of repression against dissent, which leads us to apathy, and our growing revulsion of the elite class' appropriation of the judicial apparatus to their own benefit, which leads us to anger and therefore dissent.

As a social force, anger follows the same general laws as any physical force found in nature. A force which is repressed does not vanish away. Rather, it accumulates behind the obstacle which retains it and grows in magnitude until the obstacle comes under stress. And when the force is eventually released, it takes the form of a violent explosion which brings the obstacle down. Today, the obstacle constituted by the elite class' judicial apparatus is finding itself under considerable stress, pressured as it is by the forces of anger accumulating behind it.

Those pressures will continue to grow in years to come, as our rulers' judicial schizophrenia does not happen in a vacuum. It takes place in a global socioeconomic context of systematic looting of the public commons which I had referred to in an earlier blog post as a modern form of barbarism. It is because they are robbing us that the world's elite class must allocate an increasing amount of their resources to both controlling us and getting themselves off the hook whenever they get caught. Gordo and friends did not invent the neoliberal ideology which transfers the public commons into private hands: they are simply doing what the members of their global class are meant to do. And so, they have no option but continue to crack down on activists like Betty while bailing themselves out, thus accelerating the conditions for a massive social explosion. They are objectively working on the side of the revolution. All I can say to them is – keep it up, brothers!

In my frequent moments of powerlessness and apathy, I take personal comfort in one particular law of dialectics, the law of transformation of quantity into quality. Water when cooled down to zero degree turns to ice not gradually, but all at once. Change when it happens is usually not incremental but instantaneous and brings along a new qualitative reality. There are thresholds when suddenly we are not in Kansas anymore. That is what, for example, makes the threat of climate change so godawful terrifying. This law helps me answer the nagging question of why are we keeping our heads down, even as the elite class continues to abuse us on a daily basis. Marxist commentator Rob Sewell wrote:

“Just as colossal subterranean pressures that accumulate and periodically break through the earth's crust in the form of earthquakes, so gradual changes in the consciousness of people lead to an explosion which is turned into a class struggle. The "cause" of the qualitative change may be something quite small and incidental, but it has become "the last straw that breaks the camel's back", to use a popular (dialectical) expression. It has become the catalyst whereby quantity changes into quality.”

"A catalyst" is also what Rafe Mair called Betty in a recent column. He is spot on. That, indeed, has been Betty's historical significance in this province. By using disproportionate legal weaponry against her, the judicial apparatus has only succeeded in speeding up the very chemical reaction which it was trying to avoid. The Crown has realized the magnitude of its error and is now in damage control. It has recently circulated the following statement on the blogosphere, referring to Crown prosecutor Mike Brundrett's submission to the court of the two pedophile rulings:

"While making submissions to a Court, the Crown may refer to cases for the legal principles they set out. That does not mean that the Crown equates the background facts of those cases with the case before the Court. In the context of Ms Krawczyk’s appeal, the Crown is not analogizing acts of civil disobedience with sexual offences."

Too late, Mr. Brundrett. The reaction is already initiated, the contradiction has been expressed. You are no longer in control in this matter. The laws of motion are now in control.

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

2011-12-17T15:00:00.000-08:00

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 whenI wrote to Dr. Kiley the following:

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

I was thinking that, witha successful Tech Briefing done, we served the public interest very wellby telling the truth: no assumptions, no speculations, no hiddenagenda, but the unvarnished truth. As a CFIA employee, I was, and am,proud of the way how we conducted the ISA suspect investigation from dayone, including the Tech Briefing in question.

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

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

So my state of mind was andis the following: by telling the truth first is how we want to earnand preserve the public trust and build public relations, - sogood 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 letme 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

2011-12-15T19:02:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-30T09:39:00.001-08:00

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-virusscare, a Canadian government researcher said she found a similar virus in morethan 100 wild fish from Alaska to Vancouver Island.

Canadianofficials never told the public or scientists in the United States about thosetests — not even after evidence of the virus discovered in October wastreated as an international emergency, according to documents and emailsobtained by The Seattle Times.

Theresearcher's work surfaced only this week after she sought and was deniedpermission by a Canadian official to try to have her old data published in ascientific 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:

He advised me to contact CFIA directly with my questions.
He was in agreement with CFIA’s finding that there was "no confirmed case of ISA in BC".
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 regretthat you are still confused, even though Dr. Marty and myself have done ourbest 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 withintroduced pathogens or diseases, I will report them. That's actually part ofmy ethical responsibility as a veterinarian. If I don't report diseases likethat 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

2011-11-30T08:19:00.000-08:00

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

2011-11-08T21:43:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

Dr. Con Kiley, Director of National Aquatic Animal Health atthe CFIA, announced that his agency had tested the 48 samples used in previoustests and that all of them were negative for ISA. There is no evidence that ISA occurs in fish off the waters of BritishColumbia(*), he concluded with a confident voice intended at subduingthe 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 reporterfrom the Seattle Times asked some of the most relevant questions of theconference as he tried to piece together the contradictory information he wasreceiving from his various sources:

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

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

Like a compromised fish sample, the quality of the government’smessage degraded rapidly. They had started with the solid, simple line that allresults were negative. Then, under journalistic pressure, they retreated to a verydifferent and much more complex place, that the results were actuallyinconclusive. And then, they moved to the realm of the incomprehensible, bystating that a positive could technically be read as a negative. They were losingtheir grip over their media conference. But then it got much worse for them, asthe journalist from the Seattle Times continued:

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

A: What would be thepoint? The problem is that the quality of the samples is partially or totallydegraded. We received them in poor condition. Sharing these samples would notbe good science.

Q: Does this commentapply to the samples collected more recently in the Fraser Riveras well?

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

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

A reporter from Yukon News ventured to ask: are you planning to do any further tests up Northin the Yukon?Dr. Kiley gave a response for the books: No, we only do our investigations in Canadian waters. Well lasttime I checked, Yukon was still part of Canada, she wasquick 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-evidentjustification.

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

Q: What do you make ofthe precautionary principle?

A: We take any findingof disease very seriously.

Q: It did not soundlike it today, though.

A: We use science asour guiding principle in all things. And right now, we can say there is noevidence of ISA in British Columbia.

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

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

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

This disastrous media conference is not an isolated incidentbut 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 offin

Canada

’ssalmongate. 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 allthe major and minor mistakes that government reps have made as they scramble tocover up the ISA trail. At least, the salmon farming industry is being smart bymostly keeping its mouth shut about all of this and letting government take thelead 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 incharge 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 howlead government scientists – not just politicians – have weighed into thebalance and come up with such absurd and callous comments as those uttered byDr. 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 withindustry and government in perpetuating the status quo. And so, thescientific elite’s governance over our scientific matters will come to an endas 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

2011-10-31T12:59:00.000-07:00

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

October31, 2011

DearDr. Marty,

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

OnAugust 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 forinternational foreign animal diseases. They prefer that they be called.”

Letme provide some context.

Youwere being cross-examined by Mr. Spiegelman, counsel for Canada, and the topicwas a report that Dr. Alexandra Morton wrote to CFIA inquiring about somepossible cases of infectious salmon anemia (ISA) that she had found in theCommission's disclosure database.

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

But then, Mr. Spiegelman asked you some follow-upquestions 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. wasprotected from that disease.

And you stated:

“Throughoutthe 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 allnegative. And so that gives me a great deal of confidence that we don't haveISAV in British Columbia.

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

So the fishhealth, because there weren't requirements from CFIA before January, we sort ofhave a grandfather-type system.”

Your comments, I take it, were intended to convey thereassuring message that the risk of ISA in British Columbia was so low thatCFIA 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 regulatoryagencies in charge of protecting us against animal disease pandemics were atsleep at the wheel, sloppy, complacent, dismissive, negligent, or worse.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On FridayOct. 21 - more than a week after ISA was detected in B.C. salmon - Canadianofficials issued a press release devoid of any sense of urgency. They announcedthey will run more tests, wait several weeks for results, and only then, ifadditional testing reveals ISA, stakeholders will be convened to, "identifyand take appropriate next steps." Really?!”

Yours very truly,

Ivan Doumenc

ISA pandemic in BC

2011-10-28T23:26:00.000-07:00

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

Ghost river

2011-10-26T22:55:00.000-07:00

Nicole Mackay weighing a salmon at the Adams River before sampling it.

Photo Sonja Grosse Broemer.

“STRONG SALMON NUMBERS DEFY PREDICTIONS IN ADAMS RIVER RUN” -- Such was the upbeat headline appearing in several newspapers around British Columbia in early October.

According to those reports, the DFO estimates for the 2011 Adams run had been bumped from 58,000 to almost half a million returning sockeye. “A tenfold increase”, papers and broadcasters announced triumphantly. The sockeye, they concluded, were returning “in stronger numbers for the second year in a row”. Our salmon are back! was the general mood and feel-good story of the day.

So much so, that DFO Community Liaison Officer Jeremy Heighton felt he had to step in to rain a little on the media parade. “The tone and numbers used in this story can be quite misleading without correct context. I want to clarify what is actually going on”, he wrote in an email. “At this time… the number of fish passed through Mission (400,000+) is fairly consistent with historic sub-dominant run numbers. We are NOT seeing 10x the number of fish projected. We are simply seeing the passage of fish which are heading to the Adams.”

Mr. Heighton was spelling out the obvious: just because we have seen them in Mission does not mean that all the sockeye will make it to the Adams, many may actually die en-route.

And he did well to moderate our enthusiasm, because this moment of media bliss did not last for long. A few days later, as I was preparing to drive up to the Adams with a group of salmon friends, I started to receive some alarming reports from people already at the river telling me that it was, for the most part, empty. We left for the Adams weary of what we would find.

As soon as we arrived, we knew something was off balance. We were supposedly at the peak of the run, October 23, and yet there was hardly any smell of rotting fish in the air. At the first bridge out of the parking lot, before reaching the river itself, we looked down into the small channel where last year (the legendary 2010) hundreds of fish had competed and died for the right to spawn. This time however, not a single fish, either dead or alive.

We went to the river bank. No fish. We walked along the trail through the woods for several minutes, checking out every opening in the vegetation leading to the river. No fish. We finally reached the gravel beach at the end of the Island Loop trail. There were some fish there. Finally, some sockeye. Not a lot, though. I spotted maybe sixty in the water ahead of me, comfortably spaced every two to three meters, where one year earlier thousands upon thousands were densely congregated in massive schools.

At the Roderick Haig-Brown plaque:
the most densely populated section of the river.

Photo Sonja Grosse Broemer

More troubling, I noticed even fewer dead fish on the river bank than in the water itself. If there are no carcasses, I thought in a flash of panic, this means that the fish never made it here. So we changed our plan and decided to walk straight down to the other end of the park where the mouth of the river was, and where drifting fish carcasses would normally accumulate. At the river mouth, we would surely know.

We got to the river mouth and strolled along the shoreline of Shuswap Lake. There were almost no carcasses, only a few scattered bones and fish heads looking pretty ancient. It was like inspecting the vestiges of a battle fought many months ago. Had we missed it? Was the run over? But I clearly remembered hearing the opposite message about the sockeye taking their time this year and the peak date being constantly pushed back. So no, we couldn’t have missed it.

We gradually got better at spotting dead carcasses under logjams and vegetation, and so we did find a few here and there. A hundred dead fish, two hundred maybe in the delta section around us. Then we saw five living sockeye in the water, all females for whatever reason, who were slowly making their way up the river. They looked as lost as we were in this solitude.

You may not fully understand what was going through our heads if you haven’t yourself seen the 2010 Adams run. We were standing at the very place where, one year earlier, piles upon piles of dead fish had accumulated over hundreds of meters of shoreline as DFO staff went by counting them. Then, the beachfront must have held tens of thousands of dead fish. Obviously, we didn’t expect anything close to that number this year, but we did expect at least to see some dead fish. Instead, we were standing on the banks of a ghost river.

The Adams River mouth in 2010...
Photo Isabelle Groc

... and that same place today.
Photo Sonja Grosse Broemer

The river mouth today from another angle. Photo Elodie Cousin

“What do you think?” I asked fellow salmon activist Nicole Mackay who was part of our trip.

“It’s bleak”, she said looking straight ahead. And then she said nothing at all, and then neither did I.

Nicole had brought equipment with her to take some fish samples. It's a routine which salmon people such as Nicole have got into: whenever you travel to salmon country, you come prepared to take samples. Because DFO won’t do it. And so, it’s up to the people to gather those samples which are so critical in establishing the truth about diseases decimating our salmon.

Focusing on fish samples was a welcome distraction for our group, as it kept our minds away from dark thoughts. So we all went back to the gravel beach of the Island Loop trail, the only area where we had spotted fresh carcasses suitable for sampling. Nicole picked up a male, weighed it, had a quick look at its gills. They were healthy. She cut off the head and carved through its forehead with a sharp knife until she could access the brain. With a pair of tweezers she delicately grasped the small brain and dropped it into a sampling tube and sealed it. Then she opened the fish’s belly: squirts of milt gushed from under her knife. That fish had not spawned. Nicole inspected the liver and kidney and spleen and took a sample of each, taking detailed notes along the way. Then she put the fish back together and replaced it in the water where she had found it. She performed the same operation on a female. As she cut its belly open, eggs came out bursting. No spawn there either. In all, Nicole opened five fish that afternoon, two of which had spawned.

Unspawned. Photo Sonja Grosse Broemer

Next we walked upstream to an area around the plaque dedicated to Roderick Haig-Brown, the park’s founder. Curiously, that’s where most of the sockeye were located. I counted approximately fifty to sixty fish per 100 x 100 meter square of river. That was definitely better than downstream, although still pretty godawful. Forget 2010. I focused my memories on 2007, the year which had spawned the current run and which, according to DFO, had seen about 50,000 fish return.

In 2007, I had come to the Adams with my parents who were visiting from France, a country where wild salmon has been extinct for half a century. I remember the stark contrast between them, standing like two children in complete awe, unaware until that day that nature could offer such a sublime spectacle – and me, heartbroken and dejected as I contemplated a largely empty river, asking myself for the first time what the hell was happening to our salmon. Yet I have no doubt that in 2007, in spite of my depressing memories, there were significantly more salmon in the water and on the shores than in 2011. We won’t have DFO’s final numbers on this year’s run until late December, but I will wage that it will not amount to much more than 40,000 – if we are lucky.

The media headlines were wrong. There will be no miracle run this year. We are back to the bleak reality of steep salmon decline. One thing I cannot get out of my mind, though, is this number: 400,000 sockeye confirmed in Mission back in September, according to the Pacific Salmon Commission. Those are escapement numbers, meaning that those fish do not get harvested but are let through so they can reach the spawning grounds. And yet, at the other end, in the Adams River, maybe forty thousand if all goes well. That would be, if confirmed, a 90 percent en-route mortality rate.

I don’t care what scientists and fishery managers may say about high mortality affecting late runs such as the Adams, or the fact that such death rates have become the new norm in recent years. Those numbers are unnatural. Especially when I ponder that historically, sub-dominant runs (of which 2007 or 2011 are a part) have seen one million sockeye return on average.

Our sockeye are dying. Are they being killed by a virus? We don’t know yet. But we will, thanks to the army of anonymous heroes who, like Nicole Mackay, are collecting fish samples all over the Fraser. This is a novel form of direct action which is legal, appealing, useful, and politically devastating for the structure's status quo. It is threatening DFO and other government bodies of irrelevance in one of their core missions, disease detection.

With the assistance of SFU Professor Rick Routledge, Alexandra Morton uncovered the deadly ISA virus in pacific salmon on her first attempt, even though government has been claiming for years that their own tests for that same virus have all come back negative. On her first attempt: what does it tell us about their tests? More than a successful test, this marks the emergence of a successful movement. I was proud and privileged to witness that movement in action on the shores of the Adams River last weekend, as Nicole Mackay methodically and silently collected her fish samples.

Vancouver Sun: Facts on salmon tests

2011-10-25T09:01:00.000-07:00

Facts on salmon tests and egg imports raise concerns

BY IVAN DOUMENC, VANCOUVER SUN OCTOBER 27, 2011

Re: Let's not jump to conclusions over infected salmon, Letters, Oct. 22.

Mary-Ellen Walling writes: "Nearly 5,000 fish from salmon farms in B.C. have been tested for ISA with the highly sensitive PCR test and the disease has never been found."

But she does not write that Dr. Gary Marty, lead veterinarian for the government of B.C., has diagnosed the classical lesions associated with ISA over a thousand times in B.C.'s fish farms since 2006. There is therefore a strong suspicion that the ISA virus has been in our waters for at least five years but that government scientists have failed to recognize it as such.

She writes: "Egg imports have been highly regulated for many years."

But she omits to write that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has punched some gaping holes through those regulations over the years to allow unregulated hatchery eggs to enter B.C. at the request of the fish farm industry.

It was revealed at the Cohen Commission - and entered there as evidence - that in 2004, DFO director for the Pacific Region Dr. Laura Richards successfully petitioned to allow for the importation of eggs from a European hatchery that did not meet Canada's fish health protection regulations. She did that on behalf of two B.C. salmon farming companies.

Finally, Ms. Walling writes that "experts across Canada are cautioning people" not to overreact and oversimplify.

For their part, experts and lawmakers across the U.S. and the world are voicing concern about this ISA discovery and wondering why Canadian authorities did not apply the precautionary principle while they still could.

Ivan Doumenc Vancouver

http://www.vancouversun.com/Facts+salmon+tests+imports+raise+concerns/5614399/story.html#ixzz1bzye7tKZ

Manufactured disaster

2011-10-17T20:22:00.000-07:00

The ISA virus. Photo: Fisheries Research Service

Sadly, we had it coming. It is now official. The European strain of Infectious Salmon Anemia (ISA) has been reported today for the first time in Pacific wild salmon. It was found in sockeye caught on the central coast of British Columbia. Read the press release from Salmon Are Sacred, and the stories all over the media.

ISA is a deadly virus directly linked to fish farms. It has decimated salmon stocks in many countries since the 1980s such as Norway, Scotland, Chile. Entire ecosystems and coastal communities have been ecologically and economically devastated by this salmon equivalent of the Black Death. And now we learn we have it too.

With such a dangerous virus out in the open around the world for so many years, the question on everyone’s minds this morning was: how did we get to this? How did we allow this virus to even reach the shores of British Columbia? Surely by now, we know how to stop this thing, don’t we?

We actually do, and we have known for many years. Ban the import of Atlantic salmon hatchery eggs. In this age of total globalization, even farmed salmon eggs are no longer produced locally but rather thousands of miles away, usually in Europe. Those imported eggs are important, because scientists see them as the primary vector in the transmission of viruses such as ISA from one region of the world to the other.

Since the late 1980s, scientists in Canada and elsewhere have relentlessly alerted government against the risks of such egg imports. But Canada’s Department of Fish Farms chose instead to ignore those calls and adopted a policy of institutional recklessness to fulfill its mandate of serving industrial aquaculture. A report written by Dr. Alexandra Morton for the Cohen Commission before ISA was discovered in BC, and which was recently admitted as evidence in spite of furious objections on the part of government and industry lawyers, explains in detail how government has gambled with our wild salmon.

BC’s eggs, Morton explains, are shipped from a hatchery in Iceland called Stofnfiskur. The problem is that this particular hatchery does not meet the health safety standards of Canadian law. So technically, they couldn’t be imported. Don’t let that technicality stop the Department of Fish Farms, though! In a briefing dated 2004, DFF’s Director for the Pacific Region Laura Richards articulated the following key arguments in an effort to allow those eggs into Canada in spite of their non-compliance:

“Two BC salmon farming companies wish to import Atlantic salmon eggs from Stofnfiskur, an Icelandic company which is not certified under the Canadian Fish Health Protection Regulations”
“Failure to provide permission for egg importation may trigger a trade challenge under the World Trade Organization …”
“Additionally, DFO could also be viewed as causing a competitive disadvantage of the aquaculture industry by denying them access to alternate strains”

Following this briefing, Alexandra Morton wrote to Justice Cohen in her report, “Laura Richards was successful in her petition to allow eggs from a hatchery that does not meet Canada’s Fish Health Protection Regulations.” By opening that regulatory backdoor for the industry, Dr. Richards may have allowed the ISA virus to enter British Columbia.

In that same report, Dr. Morton also showed that the ISA virus may have been present in BC for several years but that scientists on government payroll have chosen not to acknowledge that possibility. Dr Gary Marty, a lead veterinarian with the Province of BC, reported cases of classic lesions associated with ISA 1,100 times since 2006. Yet he never registered any of those repeated diagnoses – not a single time – as being the ISA virus itself, even though the disease was very well known worldwide and was routinely associated with fish farm operations similar to those found in British Columbia, and even though the symptoms matched the disease perfectly.

The problem in this matter is not so much Dr. Marty’s personal decision not to recognize those thousand diagnoses as being ISA. Rather, as Alex Morton noted in her report to Cohen, the problem is that “Dr. Marty is the only government person we know of who is doing these examinations.” Placed by his employer, the government of BC, in a position of complete monopoly over the diagnosis of ISA, Dr. Marty can literally say whatever takes his fancy about those symptoms. For that matter, he could have said that those fish died of old age. No other scientist is in a position to either confirm or challenge his conclusions, not having access to the same information as he does. And so, Marty’s statement that those classic symptoms of ISA are not actually ISA can never be scientifically disproved. It is, as Morton wrote to Cohen, a statement that “could be repeated indefinitely”.

And this is how a government maintains the status quo, preserves a position of business as usual no matter what may be happening in the real world. By manufacturing self-supporting scientific statements which cannot be challenged, the charade can be, in effect, maintained and repeated indefinitely. Of course, this is no longer called science, but dogma. And yes, it may occasionally find itself contradicted by real things that happen in the real world – such as herrings bleeding from their fins, Harrison sockeye dying by the hundreds of thousands without spawning, or the emergence of freakish bright-yellow pink salmon all over the Fraser River. But those are merely PR matters that need to be managed, a small price to pay for the perpetuation of the cozy relationship between government, industry, and the scientific establishment within the salmon-industrial complex.

How does the public fight back? As so many times before, Alexandra Morton is showing the way, and it’s actually simpler than it sounds. She is breaking the monopoly of knowledge that government is working so hard to maintain. She has taken the matter of salmon testing and diagnosis in her own hands. Earlier this month, she went in the field twice to test the salmon – and came back with evidence of severe hepatitis and pre-spawn mortality in the Fraser salmon. She struck a partnership with SFU professor Rick Routledge to send central coast sockeye for testing – and came back with the ISA virus. She has fearlessly denounced the ruthless policy of financial starvation and bureaucratic harassment inflicted by the Department of Fish Farms on one of her most talented scientists, Dr. Kristi Miller – and I will wage my money that Alex will succeed there too in breaking the knowledge impasse. Miller will eventually get her money and her research will resume and provide us with righteous answers.

Fighting back will require an array of initiatives. In this asymmetrical struggle against a bloated and hyper-powerful bureaucracy, our strategy is to initiate shocks which grow over time by taking a life of their own. One such initiative is called the “Kristi Miller Fund”. Back in September, Dr. Miller testified at the Cohen Commission that her research funding for the sockeye salmon had been cut off. In particular, she had applied for a grant to test farmed salmon for the virus signature that she had identified. She was asking for $18,750 – a pittance in research terms – but her hierarchy said sorry, we don’t have the money at this time.

The Kristi Miller Fund

What a slap in the face. We who were sitting in the public gallery at the Cohen Commission on that day were fuming with rage. Then someone said: “So they don’t have that money, eh? Heck! (actually she used another word) Let’s just raise the money ourselves so Kristi Miller can do her testing.” The Kristi Miller Fund was born. To date, about $6,000 of the money has been raised. That’s about a third, not bad. I suspect we will get way beyond the required $18,000 without even breaking a sweat, as soon as this particular initiative will have taken a life of its own and grown beyond control. People have given anywhere between $10 and $1,000. What matters really is not how much each person gives but rather how many people end up contributing to this Fund, that’s the metric I’ll be most interested in.

The purpose of this initiative is not to bail out government with our own paycheques. Rather, it’s to turn this petty, shameful move to starve Miller’s work into a media and PR nightmare for the government. Initiate a shock that will grow on its own and blow up in the bureaucracy’s face. When we have the money, we’ll hold a press conference and put up a big stink about it, hand out to the media a story that they will want to tell. The plan is to force Miller’s hierarchy to miraculously “find” the money that she was denied. It’s really about saving government from its own stupidity, helping the Department of Fish Farms to start its long, painful march towards detox. So than one day, it can break away from its incestuous relationship with industry and be – once again! – the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

People have asked: what happens if the Department of Fish Farms refuses to take the money or if it suddenly finds money of its own to fund Miller? Where does the money go? Well, I think that answer is rather obvious. We will hand it over to Alexandra Morton, so she can do more testing and diagnosis independently of industry and government. That way, we will win on both counts. Miller will get her funding restored, and Morton will continue her heroic work to break the state monopoly over salmon knowledge.

Follow this link to pitch in your own two cents to the Kristi Miller Fund!

.

The ugly face of state repression

2011-09-12T22:52:00.000-07:00

Mitch Taylor, counsel for the government of Canada.
Photo UBC Law Alumni Magazine, Winter 2008

When Mitchell Taylor, the counsel representing Canada, rose last Thursday to cross-examine Alexandra Morton, we were expecting some payback time. For the past two weeks, through the mighty voice of her lawyer Gregory McDade, Alex had exposed to broad light the incestuous relationship between government and industry inside the salmon-industrial complex.

The cases of conflict of interest, incompetence, and acts of sabotage within DFO had piled up at the Cohen Commission like as many dead fish. Mr. Taylor’s job was to level the playing field a little for the government of Canada by bringing as much discredit as possible onto Alexandra Morton. Character assassination was his mandate, a despicable but generally accepted practice in the legal profession. So we were definitely waiting for him on that terrain.

Taylor performed his duty meticulously. He insisted on calling his witness “Ms. Morton” rather than the customary “Doctor” used to address people holding a Doctorate. He attempted to bring her US degree into disrepute by alluding to her university as being “famous for political activism”. He systematically declined to discuss any of Morton’s numerous published scientific papers or any of their content, insisting rather that she was an “advocate against open net fish farms” and that her primary activity in life was to “write a blog” and to be “quite a prolific emailer”.

Mr. Taylor did something else, however, which was not expected of him and of a different nature altogether. Deliberately, he crossed a red line. He used a technical and overall minor incident to conduct a frontal assault against Alexandra Morton’s right to free expression.

The night before her cross-examination, Alexandra Morton had made a bad judgment call by posting a blog. Something that she had been doing routinely on an almost daily basis for the past several months. September 7, however, was the one night when she shouldn’t have done it, according to a rule of the court that specifies that a witness should not communicate about the ongoing proceedings while under oath. A honest mistake, Morton explained to the court the next morning. I thought that only my evidence, which the public had not yet heard, was included in the ban, I did not know that the material already made public and broadcast live on the Internet was included as well. She apologized to the court and her apology was graciously accepted by Justice Cohen, with apparently little consequence over the proceedings.

Not so for Mr. Taylor of Canada. He wanted to extract his pound of flesh out of Morton’s screw-up. So he put Morton’s September 7 blog on the screen – even though Morton had already removed it from her blog after realizing her mistake –, and he proceeded to dissect it line by line, punctuating every sentence with a you violated the rules of this court reprimand. It would have remained more of the same character assassination exercise, if it were not for what Taylor did next:

Taylor: Let’s continue with your blogging, if we may Ms. Morton. Let’s look at the blog from August 31. This deals with the evidence that the veterinarians gave. If we go to page three, this appears to be a cartoon that you put on the blog of what appears to be the Commissioner speaking to those four witnesses. And the cartoon is showing flames coming from the pants of the witnesses and the words of the Commissioner are “pants on fire”. Ms. Morton, are you familiar with the saying “liar, liar, pants on fire”?

The sight of Mr. Taylor – a sinister figure if there ever was one in a courtroom – uttering on public record the phrase “liar, liar pants of fire” with his nasal daffy-duck voice while maintaining his expressionless poker face was truly hilarious. I could not help but join the rest of the crowd in a rowdy and joyful eruption of laughter.

This moment of comic relief passed quickly though, as I realized what had just happened. The August 31 blog? Wait a minute. Morton was not under oath on that date. This was no longer about her breaking some obscure court rule. What was it, then? Oblivious to the laughter still shaking the public gallery, Taylor continued:

Taylor: Do you agree with me that this cartoon is disparaging of those witnesses’ evidence?

Morton: I thought this was a representation, without saying the words --

Taylor: -- Are you saying they lied?

Morton: How can you look at the symptoms of a disease, have somebody like Dr. Gary Marty report those symptoms as being the clinical signs of marine anemia, which a DFO scientist [Kristi Miller] thinks the majority of Fraser sockeye are being killed and weakened by, and the vets above him, Peter McKenzie of Mainstream, and Dr. Mark Sheppard simply don’t recognize that that disease exists. That --

Taylor: Ms. Morton --

Morton: -- that cannot stand.

Taylor: Ms Morton, this is not an opportunity for you to make a speech.

Morton: Well don’t ask me questions, then.

Okay. Got it. I’m with you now, Mr. Taylor. What you are really getting at with this is that Alexandra Morton should not be criticizing the scientific and industrial establishment – ever, whether or not she is under oath. Because for one thing, this could be construed as libel, a punishable offense. And for another, as Taylor proceeded to explain, this is a morally reprehensible behavior:

Taylor: Do you agree with me that it is against the code of conduct for a registered biologist to speak disparagingly of a colleague registered biologist?

Morton: It is, yes.

Taylor: Can we equally apply that, then, to the fact you should not be disparaging of other professionals such as veterinarians?

Morton: Mr. Taylor, my personal code of conduct is that when I see an ecosystem being destroyed, I will use what tools I can that are fair and legal to try and represent that truth. And if --

Taylor: -- all right, thank you.

Morton: -- and if the cartoon was the only way to do it, that’s what I was going to do.

Taylor then brought up another of Morton’s blogs, dated September 5, and therefore also clearly outside of the “no comment while under oath” restriction period. In that blog, Morton referred to an incident where gas bubbles were spotted near a fish farm in the Broughton Archipelago. Called by residents to investigate, DFO biologist Kerra Hoyseth found an underwater pipe full of dead farmed salmon. In spite of her discovery, Hoyseth reported that there was no conclusive evidence as to the exact cause of the gas emanations and so she closed the file.

In her September 5 blog, Morton commented about this incident: “Everyone knows rotting causes gas. I suspect Hoyseth's first instinct was to be more truthful, but I think this painfully illustrates DFO's relationship with fish farms. How can I believe anything DFO says about salmon farms after this? Hoyseth did not tell me the truth. I feel badly for her, because I suspect this was what was expected of her. How many others in DFO are doing the same thing just to keep their job?”

Mr. Taylor charged at Morton head on:

Taylor: You have no evidence that [Ms. Hoyseth] was not telling the truth, do you? You just don’t agree with what she was finding or her interpretation of it. You have a different interpretation.

Morton: Mr. Taylor -- a pipe full of rotting salmon! Ms. Hoyseth, I am sure, understood that it could easily produce bubbles. But it was my interpretation that she did not want to report that to me, and so she glossed over the finding of that entire pipe full of rotting fish.

Taylor: Thank you. You just answered it, because you used the word “interpretation”. Now, you say "How many others in DFO are doing the same thing just to keep their job?" You have no evidence to support that accusation that people in DFO don’t tell the truth just to keep their jobs, do you?

Morton: I actually do. But I am not going to reveal all my sources, because they are scared.

Two things jump out of this extraordinary exchange. One, Morton is sending a stern warning back to Taylor and the members of the scientific-industrial establishment: Sue me if you dare! I will not come to court empty handed. The second is Taylor’s dorky Aha I nailed you answer over the word “interpretation”. How not to think of an Inquisition trial with the church prosecutor exclaiming: She uttered the word of God in vain, what more proof do we need?

Taylor then went to the next level of his attack against Morton. He put in question her right to peaceful assembly.

Taylor: Ms. Morton, I want to ask you about some protests you may have participated in against fish farms, and there is nothing wrong with that of course. You have participated in protests against fish farms at the farm site, haven’t you?

Morton: Yes.

Taylor: And you did that in a way that you and others got very close to the actual site and pens and/or may have gone into the site itself.

Morton: No, we never go into the pens.

Taylor: I see. And you did that [did what? Morton just told him they didn’t do it] despite there being some signs that say No trespassing, quite prominent signs?

Morton: First of all, there were no signs at that farm. Second of all, it is actually illegal to put a No trespassing sign on a marine farm that has a license of occupation. Mainstream tried that for a little while, but they were told to remove them. So it was a temporary situation because it was unlawful.

As you have gathered from Alex Morton’s razor sharp responses in the various exchanges quoted above, Mr. Taylor did not fare as well as envisioned in his original game plan. After she absorbed the initial shock of such brutal attacks against her person, Morton began to fight back like a goddess. As the day went, and as the lawyer for BC took turns with Canada in attempting to unseat Morton, she took full control of the battlefield. She would detect the traps embedded in the questions a mile away, she would avoid them effortlessly. Nay, she would turn them right back against the examining lawyer like as many lethal boomerangs. If you have not seen Alex Morton on the witness stand this last Thursday, you do not know yet what a salmon warrior truly looks like. Such is the overwhelming power of shining and uncompromising truth.

Being a Frenchman, the historical reference that naturally jumped at me as I witnessed that extraordinary day was that of Joanne of Arc, and how during her trial for witchcraft she turned her interrogators into a bunch of half-witted jackasses with their pre-canned mechanical questions. All that these two women needed to do in order to overcome the sophists and Pharisees tasked with prosecuting them, was to provide some simple, luminous, painfully truthful answers which needed no other support but themselves. It is a bit frightening to see how the interrogation techniques in matters of the state have not changed much since the 15th century. It is reassuring to see that the manner to respond to such techniques have not really changed either. Just speak the truth and let its magic do the work.

In the end, and for all his misgivings, Mr. Taylor has rendered a valuable public service to the people of this country. By choosing to conduct his cross-examination of Alex Morton in the way he did, he has revealed the ugly face of state repression in action. Morton has dared to expose the collusion of the government of Canada and the fish farm industry? The government responds by attacking her personally and viciously, threatening her over her constitutional right to free speech and free assembly.

The service that Mr. Taylor provided was certainly not worth the $25 million that we have disbursed on this Commission, and frankly I dare not ask how much his personal invoice for mudslinging Morton will amount to. The final answer to the worthiness of this Inquiry will have to come from Justice Bruce Cohen himself. It was noted by some, perhaps as a sign, that at the end of the day Cohen personally thanked Alex for standing as a witness and ostensibly called her “Doctor Morton”.

The Lion

2011-09-02T13:50:00.000-07:00

Photo Don Staniford.

Gregory McDade, Alexandra Morton’s lawyer, ruled the courtroom last week. He has reshaped the Cohen Commission’s most critical days – those dedicated to salmon disease and aquaculture – in his own image. The dull and mostly meaningless proceedings of the previous months have been transformed in a series of short, sometimes brutal, always thrilling single combats between McDade and the “expert” of the moment sent by the DFO machine to counter him. Those will remain as the McDade days. Does it mean that the man succeeded in everything he has attempted at the Commission? Far from it. But he has sent some shattering shock waves through the system and set in motion a process of exposing the salmon-industrial complex, with deep ramifications that we can only begin to envision today.

Recently, I got in the habit of referring to McDade on my Facebook as “the Lion”. It’s pretty tacky, I know. But it captures my personal enthusiasm for the man and for what he embodies. For one thing, with his generous moustache and sometimes unclean shave, he physically looks like one. Then, he definitely acts like one. He sees every cross-examination as a hunt – albeit one for truth rather than for flesh – which requires impeccable preparation and methodical execution. Patiently, McDade asks. He waits, circles, retreats, gets to know and appreciate his prey as he identifies its weaker points. He knows from his long experience as a hunter that he has until the very last minutes of his allocated time to deliver the deadly strike. That weak point may emerge as insufferable self-infatuation as in the case of Dick Beamish, or shocking incompetence as in that of Michael Kent, or an excessive penchant for logical argumentation as with Josh Korman. But whatever that weakness is, Greg McDade usually finds it.

A classic illustration of McDade’s technique was his cross-examination of Dr. Michael Kent (ex-DFO, now professor of Microbiology at Oregon State University) over a report that Kent prepared for the Cohen Commission regarding pathogens. McDade proceeded in three successive strikes which each, taken individually, looked rather innocuous. But when he assembled them into a weapon, McDade delivered such a powerful blow to Kent’s credibility that subsequent witnesses to the Commission felt prudent to distance themselves from Kent’s work and name altogether. One. He established that the witness was primarily an expert in fish farm pathogens, rather than salmon pathogens in general. Two. He showed that Kent’s mandate with the Commission was to study all pathogens (both wild and farmed). Three. He demonstrated that Kent, contrary to both his field of expertise and clear mandate with the Commission, chose on his own accord to study only wild pathogens, inexplicably omitting those found in the fish farms. McDade didn’t openly say that the witness was guilty of dereliction of duty, but that’s pretty much the message that the audience received:

McDade: Let's just be clear. You didn't spend any time studying the role of fish farms in the causation of disease.

Kent: I disagree.

McDade: Did you look at the fish health database?

Kent: Which exhibit is that one?

McDade: That's the actual spreadsheets and reports and fish health auditing that the fish farms make to the Province around fish health. Did you look inside those documents?

Kent: I scanned them, there are quite a few. These are Excel sheets, right? I looked at them, they came to me quite late. I actually reviewed them this morning. I scanned them pretty extensively but I didn’t get through them at all in all sorts of detail.

McDade: Did you have them when you did your report?

Kent: No I didn’t.

McDade: wouldn't that be relevant to your report, if there are diseases that are all over those spreadsheets?

Kent: They would be useful. It’s not peer reviewed literature, but they would be useful.

McDade: What’s the distinction from peer reviewed literature?

Kent: It’s then validated by professionals. But it would be of use, but I – given the limitations that I had with my time, the most useful data were peer reviewed papers for the study.

McDade: And so DFO hasn’t studied the matter, and there is no peer review paper on it, and so for you, it didn’t exist?

Kent: No. I said it has less significance to me.

Another beautiful example was McDade’s cross-examination of Dr. Josh Korman, who wrote a report to the Commission on mortality rates observed in fish farms. Korman definitely loves the mathematical music of a logical argument, and that translates into a natural repugnance for intellectual dishonesty, unlike so many of McDade’s other customers at the Commission. McDade exploited that characteristic masterfully on a critical point involving the discovery that Chinook fish farms may have been directly linked to the recent ups and downs of the Fraser sockeye:

McDade: So the Conville Bay farm was experiencing problems with symptoms that at least some thought was marine anemia. But what I was asking was this: if there were Chinook farms experiencing marine anemia in the Discovery Islands in 2007, but none at all in 2008, would that not be a significant matter that you would want to investigate? And that is the information that I get off of those spreadsheets.

Korman: Yeah, that does line up with that pattern that you described. There are so many steps to determine that this was actually a big factor, right? Does that disease transmit? Does it cause death? All those steps we have been talking about. But certainly, it’s a hypothesis that is not unreasonable.

I came across a photo taken at this week’s salmon warriors rally at the Vancouver Art Gallery (the one posted on this blog) and I immediately went: that’s him – that lion is Greg McDade. A friend I showed the picture to remarked ironically that it was quite the lion indeed! with a rope tied around its neck. I shrugged that comment off by saying that no picture ever perfectly captures the essence of its subject.

The photo, I was to discover the next day, rope and all, was perfect. I had been acquainted with McDade’s professional expertise and class in a courtroom. I had not yet witnessed his personal courage when placed in a hostile environment. This was revealed to me last Wednesday when McDade rose to cross-examine four critical witnesses with veterinarian expertise. He started by pointing out that the employers of each witness were either the government or a fish farming corporation. He then added:

McDade: So I take it that all of you gentlemen are supporters of the status quo.

[silence]

McDade: Let me ask that question differently. There is no one here that is an independent expert from the government and companies as to the structure.

One of the witnesses: Maybe you should define “independent”?

McDade: I just want to make a statement, Mr. Commissioner, that the choice of experts for this important panel on disease is missing any expert who can comment in opposition to the current structure. But we’ll work with what we’ve got, even if it’s working with one hand behind our back.

Counsel for the Commission: The hearing plan has received Mr. McDade’s endorsement, so we will take that point, but I think it should be understood in that light.

McDade: Well, the experts that we asked to call have not been called. You are not suggesting that we haven’t asked for other experts to be called?

Counsel for the Commission: No, certainly I have not suggested that. But the final hearing plan is one that has received, to differing degree, either support – or at least no objections – in the way of applications.

That was quite a way to start a cross-examination for a lawyer, to directly incriminate the very Commission that you are addressing! McDade had a very solid point, no question about it, one which had been eloquently echoed by Alexandra Morton in her blog that same morning. But to say in Justice Cohen’s face that, like the lion in my photo, he had to work with a hand tied behind his back? It was risky, it was bold, it was brilliant.

Like the Borgs in Star Trek, his opponents had adapted to McDade’s weaponry after only a few shots. They had been carefully briefed on how to dodge his questions by bouncing him back and forth from one “expert” to the next (I am no expert in this matter, but you should address this question to Dr. X who is not here today.) McDade knew he was not going to get anything out of that panel – especially under the ridiculous time constraints imposed by the Commission, as explained in Alex Morton’s blog. So McDade-the-lawyer went political. Lost for lost, let’s get something out of this day. The Cohen Commission, he implied on public record, is an integral part of the “current structure” and actively assists in the perpetuation of the “status quo”. Dodge this.

McDade’s credit rating with the Cohen Commission must have dropped by a few notches after that sortie. But he also scored a perfect AAA with those sitting in the public gallery. We roared with pleasure at his statement. Gregory “The Lion” McDade is in synchrony with the public sentiment over this whole Cohen Commission charade, and the $25 million that it is costing the taxpayer. I personally expect nothing to come out of Justice Cohen’s recommendations. But I do expect a hefty political backlash to hit “the structure” and shake it in its core. And that will be worth the price of admission of having to sit in silence and listen for hours to the endless lies of this elitist bunch of dorks.

Greg McDade, you have our gratitude for saying out loud what we have been carrying in silence for all those months.

Kristi’s choice

2011-08-28T22:54:00.000-07:00

Dr. Kristi Miller (Head, Molecular Genetics, DFO). Photo Globe and Mail.

Reckless sabotage. Bureaucratic harassment. Financial starvation. A quasi-religious resistance to novelty. And a good dose of incompetence.

That is the mix that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has prepared for Kristi Miller, with the incredible result of bringing her critical research on salmon anemia to a complete halt. Or so we learned this past week at the Cohen Commission. As I write these lines, Kristi Miller’s research is fully stalled, with no money allocated to it and no clear indication on how long it may take to get it moving again.

How did they stop it? By using what scientists living at the top of the intellectual food chain do best: a mind game. Consciously or not (that part remains to be seen), senior management and high-ranking scientists of this bureaucracy have blocked Miller’s work by using a circular argument which holds in 4 simple statements:

1. We don't know that there is a disease.
2. We won't take any action until we know that there is a disease.
3. We make sure that our scientist cannot find whether there is a disease.
4. Therefore, we don't know that there is a disease.

We don't have hard evidence of a pathogen affecting wild salmon, Dr. Michael Kent (ex-DFO, currently Professor of Microbiology at Oregon State University) stated on the Commission’s witness stand. Without more research, it is purely speculative to say that the virus uncovered by Kristi Miller was a significant factor in the 2009 collapse, said Dr. Kyle Garver, Research Scientist at DFO. Some of the interpretations and assumptions that Miller makes in her research may be speculative or overreached, said Dr. Christine MacWilliams, senior fish health veterinarian at DFO. (A stunning comment given that MacWilliams did not feel it was necessary to explain what she meant by that.)

To some extent, Kristi Miller herself adheres to such views about her research, notwithstanding the personal and unsubstantiated attacks carried by some of her colleagues. She agreed that there is no conclusive evidence yet linking virus to disease, or fish farms to wild salmon. But there are some pretty good indications that this may indeed be the case, “a smoking gun” as she put it to the Commission. There is a distinct genomic signature found in the Fraser sockeye, there is a virus which may be linked to that signature, there is evidence of anemia and leukemia in many infected wild salmon, and there is a dramatic decline in the sockeye population in the Fraser. And so, one may conclude, there is ample and urgent justification for pursuing Miller’s research forward at DFO’s earliest convenience.

Given the promising and novel nature of Miller’s findings and level of interest it has generated in the scientific community at large – her research was recently published in the journal Science –, the amount of resistance she has encountered at DFO from her own colleagues and management is staggering. In 2009 for example, Kristi Miller prepared a memo to her senior management alerting them over the “potentially devastating impacts” of the discovered disease on the sockeye. Dr. Kyle Garver, who was asked to review the memo, attempted to water down its contents. Alexandra Morton’s lawyer, Gregory McDade, asked Garver about this particular incident during a cross-examination at the Cohen Commission:

McDade: When a senior scientist at your department says “potentially devastating impacts”, that's a significant finding for you, is it not?

Garver: I'm sorry – for me?

McDade: What I am trying to get here is a sense of what level of certainty you need about a potentially devastating impact to the sockeye salmon to actually take action, rather than more studies. How far do we have to go in proof?

Garver: We’re following a scientific approach, so we need to establish that this sequence is indeed causing a disease.

McDade: And you are not prepared to recommend an action to your senior people at DFO until you’ve done all of these laboratory studies and have found proof to your satisfaction?

Garver: Until I find that this virus is causing disease, and that it is indeed transmissible, then I probably would not recommend action at this time.

The resistance to Miller’s findings at DFO did not always follow a strict scientific approach either, and sometimes verged on the irrational or even the supernatural. In a memorable meeting, for example, Dr. Christine MacWilliams explained to Kristi Miller that all possible pathogens affecting sockeye had already been discovered and that, therefore, there was no room for any “novel undescribed” pathogens. Science, MacWilliams was telling Miller, had ended its journey. There was nothing else to discover. We, at DFO, already hold all the knowledge that there is to hold. Search no more! All truth has been revealed. Another colleague, according to Miller, stated to her that he “did not believe that marine anemia truly exists”. As if the existence or nonexistence of such diseases was a matter of faith, rather than scientific observation.

Confronted with such a wall of resistance, Kristi Miller, a pragmatic person, decided to change her tack. They wanted a causal viral agent linking her genomic signature to an actual disease before she could pursue this further? Okay then, she’d focus her work on identifying that causal (or etiological) agent. So in 2009 she went to DFO management and to Genome BC, her major funder, asking for funding to identify the etiological agent. But they didn’t like it, Miller explained, “because our scientific advisory board wanted to keep the program as we had originally proposed”. So her funding request was denied. Talk about a catch 22. We won’t support your research because we don’t see a causal agent in there. But we won’t allow you to refocus your research on finding that causal agent either, because that’s not what had originally been proposed!

Another incident. In early 2011, Miller explained, the fish farm industry showed some signs of openness and agreed to go ahead with testing their Atlantic salmon. “But I was told later by one of the vets from one of the companies that they were advised against doing the testing by someone from DFO. So that’s as far as it went, I did not test the [farmed] fish for the signature.” Miller subsequently discovered that the person – or one of them, at least – who had killed her testing program with the industry was Christine McWilliams. Her again. What a drag, that woman. In a following meeting, according to Miller, McWilliams told in her face that “if we were to ask industry to voluntarily submit fish for testing, [she] would recommend to them that it would not be in their best interest to comply.”

Loud gasp in the Cohen Commission’s audience. But we were not done gasping yet, far from it. Shortly after came the bombshell previously mentioned: that Kristi Miller’s current funding to conduct her research on the Fraser sockeye has been reduced to, well, zero. My group is not the only one in this situation, there are several others, Miller quickly added coming to DFO’s rescue. Bu then, as if engaged in some dark inner battle with herself, she made the following comment: Well of course my group is the only large one in this situation. I have eleven people on my staff, whereas all other affected groups have one or two people at most.

It was also revealed during the same session that, just as Miller’s Science paper was being published, an order came straight out of Stephen Harper’s office banning her from addressing the media or any outside scientists. The pretext invoked for such an outrageous decision was a meaningless technicality involving a disagreement about some acronyms in the media lines. Again, Miller made a feeble and unconvincing attempt to shield her bosses: I was not the only scientist covered by that ban, she explained to the Commission. Well no, Ma’am, you were not. But you sure were the only one being published in Science that next morning.

What was very troubling in this incident, in addition to Harper’s direct intervention in a purely scientific matter, was that Miller’s senior management at DFO dropped her like a rock in this instance. The counsel who was conducting the cross-examination asked Miller:

Q: So we’re just on the eve of the publication of your paper in Science. Essentially, you have a very important paper that’s being published in a very prestigious journal, and media are contacting you, and you are being told by Dr. Richards [Miller’s boss] that you have to go to Ottawa to get approval to talk to the media. Is that correct?

A: Yes, absolutely.

This complete let-down of Miller by her management on the eve of a pretty significant day in her career was confirmed in an email, in which Dr. Richards wrote: “I understand your concern, but unfortunately there is nothing they [the PM’s communications office in Ottawa] can do.” Read: Unfortunately there is nothing I am prepared to do. If Richards had tried something – anything – to correct this awful situation, the email she wrote to Miller would no doubt have referred to it. But no, nothing. Just this one-liner.

A final cause for audience stupor in Kristi Miller’s testimony was this. In March 2011, a meeting was organized at DFO to brief Dr. Richards in preparation for her testimony in front of the Cohen Commission. The object, essentially, was to tell Richards what to say and not to say to Justice Cohen. At the meeting were present representatives from both Marine Harvest (the world’s biggest fish farm corporation) and the BC Salmon Farmers Association (the front group for the fish farm industry in BC). Miller must have sensed that there was something pretty stinky about such people sitting in such a meeting, because she said what sounded like two big fat lies to many people in the audience: (a) I was not aware that those industry people were at the meeting and (b) I don’t remember whether Dr. Richards was in attendance. I paused for a moment. Why in the world would Miller “forget” whether her boss what at that meeting or not? Was she trying to cover her again?

To see Miller defend the very people and bureaucratic machinery which are sabotaging her work recklessly on a daily basis was very troubling. Another extraordinary example of this Mother Theresa attitude was given when the counsel read to Miller a transcript in which her own boss, Dr. Richards, stated that Miller had “misrepresented” her words in regards to her being muzzled. Even though her boss was attacking her directly on public record, Miller gave the following angelical response:

Q: You would not agree that this is a misrepresentation of what you heard from Dr. Richards, would you?

A: What I would have not known at the time was whose decision it was [to muzzle me]. As I learned through the inquiry process, the decision not to allow me to speak to the press came out of the privy council office, not from DFO.

Many members of the activist community have spontaneously embraced Kristi Miller as a folk hero. And she is no doubt a heroic figure. She is interested in scientific truth, and she also departs from the DFO dominant culture in that she does appear to see scientific research as a means for solving human problems, such as the precipitous decline of the sockeye. She also shows a great degree of humanity, often expressed in the form of genuine frustration towards the DFO bureaucracy. And she displayed a high level of personal honesty and integrity in the vast majority of her responses. But she is also a product of the system, a DFO scientist raised and bred like all others to follow the same unwritten code of conduct. The prime directive of that code, of course, is that you never publicly criticize the agency no matter your grievances, that we are a family, that we solve our issues internally.

So she is a hero yes, but a tragic one. One which is stuck between two worlds: that of independent, unfettered, outcome-oriented research, and that of the self-serving bureaucracy which sees research as a means to its own perpetuation. Attempting to belong to both worlds, but unable to do so, Miller runs the risk of being part of neither. But does she have a choice?

As Meryl Streep in the classic film Sophie’s Choice, Kristi Miller has to choose between the child that she has grown and nurtured for so many years (her research on salmon anemia), and her oppressive and abusive mother, the DFO. She also has to deal on a daily basis with the growing hostility of her numerous siblings in that highly dysfunctional family, her fellow researchers, who don't understand what the hell is wrong with the rogue sister, why can’t she just be like the rest of us?

The fact that Kristi Miller has not yet given up on scientific truth, in spite of the incredible and often very personal pressures she has been enduring, is a tribute to her character and moral integrity. But how much longer can she last in such a toxic environment?

Resources and action items:

Week 1 Review of the Cohen Commission: The Skeletons Rattling in Cohen’s Closet. To get all the facts that emerged at the Commission this week, referenced with their sources.

Alexandra Morton's blog. To get the analysis.

Dr. Kristi Miller's Testing Fund: *ACTION* Wild salmon supporters raising the $18,700 needed by Dr. Kristi Miller to test farmed Atlantic salmon for diseases and viruses. That amount was denied by DFO.

Wild Salmon Warrior Rally: *ACTION* Vancouver Art Gallery, Tuesday August 30, 2011

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Salmon-industrial complex in damage control

2011-08-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

Justice Bruce Cohen. Ready when you are with that disease data, buddy!

The final chapter of Justice Cohen's inquiry in the 2009 sockeye collapse opened yesterday in Vancouver. Dedicated to the critical issues of salmon disease and aquaculture, this final set of hearings will take place over the next two weeks. It represents a major deal for the people in power. At stake is nothing less than the perpetuation of the cozy relationship which unites the “three amigos” of the salmon-industrial complex: the fish farm industry, the government, and the scientific establishment.

Back in November 2010, in his infinite wisdom Justice Cohen ordered the release of disease data collected over ten years in BC's fish farms. The industry has remitted the data as ordered by the judge, but it has also obtained that it be embargoed. Those who gained access to the data had to sign an undertaking not to disclose any of it until Cohen said so. According to a persistent rumor, that data is godawful damning: it will show that BC's salmon stocks have been hit by a massive viral outbreak for many years and that the industry, government, and perhaps even high-ranking scientists knew about it for all this time but decided to keep it a secret.

The public's patience, unlike Cohen's wisdom, is not infinite. Yesterday at the Commission, I heard some wonder aloud why the disease data had not been released yet, as Cohen had hinted it would be by now. The Commission's usually deserted public gallery was almost full, a pleasant and unusual sight which conveyed a clear message that people were now awaiting some concrete answers.

Those in power, of course, know that they have to respond to the public's expectations, and in particular that this bad-for-business disease data must be made available sooner rather than later, if only to avoid a rogue and uncontrolled wikileaks-style release of the entire dataset. But how to avoid a public backlash? What is the best strategy to soften the blow of such terrible and incriminating data, if any of this persistent rumor happens to be true?

Yesterday at the Commission, the establishment laid its cards on the table. Before even releasing any data and knowing that such release is ultimately unavoidable, it preemptively deployed an elaborate damage-control strategy hinging on a simple yet effective message: Yes BC's salmon stocks have known a viral outbreak for many years, but so what? This strategy has been carefully planned and thoroughly rehearsed, as the tightly choreographed exchanges between counsels and witnesses revealed.

The first witness, Dr. Michael Kent (Professor, Microbiology & Biomedical Sciences, Oregon State University) started the day by stating right off the bat that it is very hard to study diseases in wild salmon stocks and that such diseases have consequently been understudied. He added: Yes there are pathogens in BC's wild salmon but I don't see a smoking gun, we don't have hard evidence of a pathogen affecting wild salmon.

Dr. Stewart Johnson (Head, Aquatic Animal Health, DFO) concurred with his fellow witness: there is an absence of any hard evidence of a correlation between pathogens and salmon decline. The bottom line is we can't predict that link between the presence of pathogens in the water, and the number of fry that will come out of an adult spawner. And there is also a great variability from year to year, he added for good measure.

And with that, the tone was set for the day. The same message came out of the four witnesses again and again, a message expertly multiplied and amplified by the capable counsels representing the Commission and government. That message was: we have viruses, we have high salmon mortality, but we don't have a clear link from one to the other.

The name of the game was to cultivate uncertainty, and the counsel for Canada was particularly adept at bringing out just that. "In a paper, he asked the panel of witnesses, you caution that results from different studies are difficult to compare, different methodological approaches and different species in regards to their specific susceptibility to infection. You have to be careful about how you take results from different studies. Is that right?"

Panel of leading experts [chorus]: Right!

Later, the counsel for Canada asked: “What I'm really getting at here is that when you have concurrent infections, in order to understand what are the contributing factors – if any – of the given pathogen, it's usually complex, because of the given interrelated concurrent nature of the affections that are at play. Is that correct? Do the members of the panel agree with that?”

Panel of leading experts [chorus]: We agree with that!

Counsel for Canada: “What I am hearing in this is that there is considerable uncertainty around this salmon anemia disease and no one is able to tie it to any disease so far.”

Panel of leading experts [chorus]: Thou hearst well!

Dr. Michael Kent felt obliged to qualify this last response by adding: Anemia can be caused by more than one agent, such as a parasite in addition to a virus. The virus is probably a cause but we cannot rule out other causes. Retrovirus are very common in animals, many of them are endogenous. So yes we did find a virus in our studies, but definitively was that the cause of the disease? We cannot say.

I call them here the “panel of leading experts” because that is precisely what the counsel for Canada called them on record. Counsel for Canada: “Is it fair to say that we have in you leading experts in your fields? Come on, don't be modest!” Panel of leading experts [displaying signs of modesty]: Well hmm if you say so okay then!

All counsels officiating yesterday did not show the same level of talent as their friend representing Canada. For some reason, the Province of BC decided to send out a rookie of a lawyer who immediately struck the wrong chord with the panel of 'leading experts'. She tried to obtain from the scientists something they would not give her: an actual denial of any linkage between the virus and the salmon. Fatal mistake. The fundamental principle guiding the entire day's proceedings (as the counsel for Canada had so masterfully understood) was uncertainty, not denial.

Counsel for BC: “Dr. Kent, have you concluded that no specific pathogen is a major cause to the decline of the Fraser sockeye?”

“Dr. Kent: No. I have concluded that we cannot identify any specific pathogen to be the cause of the demise of the Fraser sockeye. I know this may seem as splitting hairs but I am not saying we have excluded the possibility that a single pathogen has caused the demise of the sockeye.”

The panel of scientists was telling the young counsel from BC (albeit in much more polite words than that) "don't push your luck, lady!" Sensing the danger, and perhaps getting a little worried about the looming cross-examination due to take place on the following day, the scientists were sticking to the script: there is no certainty one way or the other in regards to viruses and salmon.

One of the problems encountered by the panel and counsels in promoting this principle of uncertainty was the groundbreaking research conducted by Dr. Kristi Miller at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. Her team's work established such linkage between viral infection and the decline of the salmon, and it has been recently saluted by the international scientific community through a publication in the journal Science. Meanwhile at home, Miller has been subjected to what can only be qualified as censorship and muzzling by her employer the DFO. Yesterday, some significant time was set aside to debunk Kristi Miller's research in no uncertain terms:

Commission counsel: Could you comment on Dr. Miller's work?

Dr. Christine MacWilliams (Fish Health Veterinarian – Salmonid Enhancement Program, DFO) : My interpretation of Kristi Miller's research based on the paper that I read is that some of the interpretations and assumptions being made were perhaps speculative or overreached. (Unfortunately, Christine MacWilliams did not explain the specific grounds on which she dismissed Kristi Miller's research, so we're going to have to take her word for it.)

The amount of ammunition that yesterday's scientific panel handed over to the fish farm industry is staggering. All the industry will need to say next week when called to witness is, tobacco industry or Exxon-style: yes our farms are heavily diseased but hey! the science is not in, the correlation between pathogens and salmon decline is not established as per our panel of 'leading experts', and we need another 10 years of science at least to establish that. But don't worry! We'll make sure that this research does happen and we'll take care of the scientists' bills.

In that cozy threesome relationship I referred to earlier between industry, government, and scientific establishment, one may ask: what's in it for the scientists? Why would they line up with the industry and politicians rather than defend, say, the principle of objective scientific truth? In a previous blog, I argued that scientists are not necessarily corrupt on an individual level, that actually most of them are fairly honest people. Rather, it's the research funding system itself which is corrupted to the bone, having been handed over to the the very industry which science is supposed to help watch over.

Dr. Stewart Johnson gave a spectacular illustration of that reality yesterday while testifying at the Cohen Commission. The strange thing is that he did not even realize he did! Describing a three-year research project which involved the study of migration patterns of Fraser sockeye from their spawning lake to the Strait of Georgia, he referred to the project's three-year funding and added almost in passing: "We received some support for this research from Marine Harvest". The fact that Mr. Johnson does not even perceive the existence of a conflict of interest here shows how deeply the scientific culture and code of ethics has been compromised by corporate funding.

As one of my fellow activists wrote in a live Facebook post during the Commission hearings: “If you leave it to the tobacco industry to detect cancer in smokers you'll get the same answer than when you leave it to fish farm apologists to find what's killing the sockeye.”