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Final investigation by CFIA shows no ISA in B.C. salmon
Mainstream Canada is pleased to learn that after an extensive investigation, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency found no evidence of the Infectious Salmon Anemia virus in farmed or wild B.C. salmon.
"Based on the final results, there are no confirmed cases of the disease in wild or farmed salmon in B.C.," says a press release issued Dec. 2, 2011 by the agency (CFIA).
Since October, the CFIA has been following up on claims that the ISA virus was found in B.C. wild salmon. Those claims were based on several preliminary laboratory tests which the CFIA attempted to repeat with more thorough testing.
"If you get a result, you should be able to repeat that result when you're using all of the same material to do the testing. That's the cornerstone of diagnostic testing," said Dr. Con Kiley, director of the CFIA's national Aquatic Animal Health Program, during a press conference Dec. 2. "That did not occur here in any of the laboratories that reported out positive findings."
Retesting confirmed there is no presence of ISA in farmed or wild B.C. salmon.
When science labs in Canada believe they may have detected a virus in preliminary testing designated by the World Health Organization as reportable, such as ISA, they are required to notify the CFIA immediately of those results for further investigation and testing.
Since Oct. 17, when a Simon Fraser University (SFU) professor and anti-salmon farming activists announced publicly they had discovered the first evidence the virus was in wild salmon, there have been a total of three notifications of ISA made to the CFIA.
All three reports are confirmed to be negative, Kiley said.
The first report involved salmon collected from Rivers Inlet by SFU researchers. All samples of those fish were retested, including samples which were not originally submitted for ISA testing, and were all confirmed negative by the CFIA and DFO.
The second report involved samples of several species of wild salmon submitted by anti-salmon farming activists. After retesting, all were confirmed negative by the CFIA and DFO.
The third report also involved samples of several species of wild salmon submitted by anti-salmon farming activists. Again, after retesting, all were confirmed negative by the CFIA and DFO.
Some samples of wild salmon suspected to contain the virus were also tested by Dr. Are Nylund at the University of Bergen in Norway. His research turned up some preliminary positives, but he was not able to replicate them either. In his lab report, Nylund said that if the tests were detecting anything, they were not detecting any known ISA viruses from Europe or Eastern North America.
Given the level of historical testing that has been done by the provincial and DFO audits, which since 2003 has tested more than 5,000 wild and farmed B.C. salmon samples, CFIA is confident there is no evidence of ISA in those samples tested in the past.
The CFIA and DFO also responded to media reports this week from Seattle, Vancouver and Los Angeles which quoted unpublished research from between 2002-2004, when a researcher working at DFO's Nanaimo lab tested hundreds of wild Pacific salmon for ISA and found positive results for more than 100 of them. At that time, DFO retested the samples and concluded there was no evidence of the virus, explained DFO's Stephen Stephens.
"We did thorough investigations into her findings. We sent her samples to our lab in Moncton and they did multiple tests, replicates of the tests, to try and find the ISA virus that she had reported on, and we were unable to reproduce any of her results," he said. "So based on that, our scientists concluded that there is no presence of ISA in her samples."
For more information please contact Grant Warkentin, Communications Officer, Mainstream Canada 250-286-0022 ext. 247