Tuesday 18 June 2013

CFIA Can't Find Disease - Updated June 19, 2013

Sign this boycott of farmed salmon products: http://salmonfeedlotboycott.com/why-boycott/.

Now, read this article about CFIA not being able to find IHN, IPN and ISA in wild and hatchery salmon in BC (they haven't tested farmed salmon): http://www.timescolonist.com/sports/b-c-wild-salmon-test-negative-for-three-diseases-1.323091.

The problem is that the CFIA was discredited in the Cohen Commission with their lab, under Gange in Moncton, NB shown by the disease experts Miller, Nylund and Kibenge to be unable to find ISA because their testing methods were not able to detect ISA and its testing machinery is too old.

So the CFIA and DFO that uses the same lab can't find ISA proves nothing. Miller's lab showed clearly that 25% of farmed chinook in Clayoquot Sound have ISA and HSMI - that is 125,000 to 250,000 fish per farm have ISA. Nylund and Kibenge have also found ISA in BC wild salmon. Miller's work goes back to 1988 in sockeye.

Do note that ISA was never in the Pacific Ocean until fish farms from Norway brought it here. The same goes for HSMI. The ISA they brought to the South Pacific caused $2 billion worth of dead fish, some quarter of a billion dead salmon. And some 13,000 employees were laid off.

As both the CFIA and DFO have been discredited, on this and other disease issues, an armslength panel of experts that are not tainted by ties to the fish farm companies from Norway is needed. It needs to be an international panel.

And the fish farms saying that they have submitted 8,000 fish for testing and not found ISA also proves nothing. The BC testing lab under Marty was shown not to be using the test he said he was using and that the probe was made in-house by a grad student. It has not been peer reviewed. So those 8,000 are discredited during the Cohen Commission and after.

Also, there is a semantic issue that must be pointed out. Marty's tables showing no disease, also notes about 1100 times the 'classic lesions of ISA'. But the semantic issue is that having the virus and having the disease are two different things. Now, the OIE that follows fish farm diseases around the world has changed its table of disease definitions and now there is a suspected category, and that is where BC falls right now.

Also behind the scenes the CFIA, that was severely criticized last year with having too cozy a relationship with a beef processor from Alberta - almost 35% of all beef in Canada, over 1500 products - is trying to get Kibenge's accreditation with the OIE taken away. This would allow it to control the fish disease issue narrative, with no other expert in Canada, even though its lab can't find ISA. It likes to say it can be 'considered' equivalent with world class standards. This is just bureacratise. The purpose in all this is to foster fish farms for international trade. Some 85% of BC farmed salmon is sold to the USA because Canadians won't eat it.

From the article above, a quote from Alexandra Morton:  “When seven labs find one thing [meaning ISA] and the one official lab reports the opposite [meaning the CFIA], the public are at risk,”

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