DFO - Ottawa's West Coast Menace

 

They knew. They all knew. The Department of Fisheries and Oceans knew. The last Conservative government knew. The Trudeau government knew. And they made it their secret.

Canada was warned in 2012 by its own scientists that a virus was infecting both farmed and wild salmon, but successive governments ignored the expert advice, saying for years that risks to salmon were low.

Justin Trudeau’s government has said it will phase out open-pen industrial fish farms off the coast of British Columbia by 2025. But both his government and the previous Conservative government were in possession of a newly released report that linked large-scale farms and wild salmon to the highly contagious Piscine orthoreovirus (PRV).

Perfidy

Kristi Miller-Saunders, a federal biologist and an author on the study, called the delay in releasing the report a “travesty” and said its omission has contributed to longstanding doubt over whether farmed salmon were infecting wild salmon.

PRV causes anemia and jaundice in farmed salmon. But in wild Chinook, whose numbers have collapsed in recent years, the virus is associated with a different disease which causes blood cells to rupture, leading to kidney and liver damage.

Miller-Saunders said in a statement her research was the first to discover the virus in North America and that the virus was “being actively transmitted between farmed and wild salmon in B.C.”


They knew and they covered up.

Alexandra Morton, an independent biologist who has studied Pacific salmon for the last thirty years, has long argued that open-pen farms are responsible for the presence of the illnesses plaguing wild salmon and alleges the country’s fisheries ministry too often sides with corporate interests.

“There are scientists that genuinely care about investigating these issues. And there is the middle level of the department that is suppressing people like Dr Miller. They’re ignoring all of the outside research,” Morton told the Guardian last year amid frustration that critical research findings were being withheld.

Comments

  1. Northern PoVApril 15, 2022 at 6:31 AM

    If our governing parties can ignore the consequences of planet-killing fossil-fuel expansion, covering up some fish-flees .....

    ReplyDelete
  2. TrailblazerApril 18, 2022 at 11:07 AM

    Some years ago the them mayor of Prince Rupert called for the building of pipelines and oil and gas exports, with the statement 'that First we had fishing now that is gone, then we had forestry now that is gone ; we need oil and gas.
    Our collective disregard for naturally renewable bounty defies common sense.
    Ocean based fish farms have long been known to be a detriment to the environment.
    Next up..
    https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/wave-of-pollution-from-cruise-ships-expected-regardless-of-new-federal-wastewater-rules-5268420.

    TB

    ReplyDelete

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