"Financial Implications: ISA (outbreaks) generally begin as a low-level mortality but have potential to increase in intensity. The presence of ISA would profoundly impact a company's business due to initial slaughter orders of entire populations (of farmed fish) and subsequent bio containment activity."
Veterinarian Dr. Mark Sheppard
FOR British Columbia's salmon, it seems, the active suppression of information is almost as dire a threat as disease.
This has been underscored recently by new revelations about some of the dangers posed to and by the province's fish farms.
In a confidential briefing note dated Aug. 1, 2007 to then agriculture minister Pat Bell, aquatic animal health veterinarian Dr. Mark Sheppard outlined the potential implications for British Columbia of an outbreak of Infectious Salmon Anaemia in the Chilean aquaculture industry.
As happens from time to time among battery-raised chickens and in cattle feedlots, the stresses inherent to dense populations and the movement of "live fish of various ages back and forth" between fishfarms, had spread the ISA virus throughout Chilean waters.
Sheppard reassured Bell at the time that some of the highrisk activities taking place in that country that may have triggered or exacerbated the outbreak - notably "the importation of live fish eggs" - were not allowed here, suggesting we might be in a better position to resist contagion.
But information since brought to light by the industry's critics would appear to put the lie to that.
In a June 21 letter to Kwakiutl Chief Rupert Wilson and Sliammon Chief Rod Allan, biologist Alexandra Morton disclosed that, in 2007 - the year of Sheppard's report - West Coast Fish Culture "received 1,000,000 eggs and raised them for one of the Atlantic salmon farming companies in BC."
Was Sheppard - and by extension our government - simply unaware of this transaction? If so, why?
To understand the severity of the threat posed by epidemic disease to stressed, densely populated species, we need only remember the blow dealt to local flocks of pine siskins earlier this year. When the siskin population exploded, the birds became stressed; over-crowded bird-feeders were contaminated and Salmonella bacteria decimated the flocks.
But there is an important difference between that situation and the danger posed by fish-farms in the coastal waters of British Columbia. When bird-lovers realized what was happening to the siskins, they rallied to do everything possible to curb the infection. Feeding stations were cleaned more often with a bleach solution and many were taken down to encourage the flocks to disperse.
We cannot be as successful at containing the ISA virus.
Once over-crowded Atlantic farm-salmon stocks become diseased and debris from opennet cages contaminates coastal waters and rivers, the genie is out of the bottle.
Quarantines and the killing of hundreds of thousands of affected fish may appear to help in the short-term, but the virus will have already been shed into the migratory waters of wild salmon, steelhead and rainbow trout stocks.
It appears that at least one dangerous disease is already here. As Morton revealed in her letter to the First Nations chiefs, farmed steelhead she purchased from a Victoria market tested positive for Salmon Alphavirus, which can cause pancreatic disease in the fish.
I don't pretend to understand all of the science involved, nor do I know if it is possible for water and fish-borne viruses to mutate over time to become a more direct threat to human health; however, one thing I do know is that, having seen Morton's photographs of carefully-documented infected fish, I don't want to see anything like that on my dinnertime plate.
All of this makes the government's attitude toward information relating to outbreaks all the more distressing. It's an attitude driven by money.
Despite knowing ISA had spread from its origins in Norway to Scotland, Ireland, Eastern Canada and Maine, it was the financial implications for the B.C. aquaculture industry, rather than the health of wild salmon, that was prominent in Sheppard's confidential memo.
And, deny it though he may, those same concerns were likely at play when, on behalf of the provincial government, B.C. Minister of Agriculture, Don McRae tabled Bill 37 to amend the Animal Health Act.
Why else would the minister say in his June 17 letter to the editor of the North Shore News, "the best way to ensure that disease outbreaks are reported early is to assure farmers that their information will be treated in a strictly confidential fashion"?
Apparently, the need for farmers to obey the law is not enough; there has to be a financial incentive as well.
If you want to see graphic examples of the information Bill 37 would assuredly have kept from public view - at least in the early stages - check them out at: alexandramorton. typepad.com/
Add the provincial attempt at censorship to the muzzling of scientists in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and decide whether it's time to tell our governments: "We're not going to stand for your gag laws any longer."
