Þetta er sama sagan alls staðar þar sem sjókvíaeldi á laxi er stundað. Helsjúkum og særðum laxi er slátrað, pakkað og hann sendur á neytendamarkað.
Leitun er að ómannúðlegri og ógeðfelldari aðferð við matvælaframleiðslu en sjókvíaeldi á laxi.
The Saturday Paper flettir hulunni af ástandinu:
On January 16, seven weeks before it was revealed thousands of tonnes of fish had died in Tasmania’s salmon leases, the state’s chief veterinary officer quietly downgraded the biosecurity risk of Piscirickettsia salmonis, the bacteria killing the fish, from a “prohibited matter” to a “declared animal disease”.
The change substantially lowered the obligations of the salmon industry to deal with the outbreak, with the industry now admitting that fish from diseased pens are being sold for human consumption.
Under Tasmanian law, prohibited matter is of the highest biosecurity concern and a person cannot possess or engage in any form of dealing with prohibited matter without a special permit. A Tasmanian Salmonid Growers Association biosecurity program document from 2014 states that when a serious new disease breaks out, the response may be as extreme as fish needing to be destroyed and removed from an entire biosecurity zone, for example, all of the D’Entrecasteaux Channel or all of the Tamar River.
A declared disease, on the other hand, is accepted as being locally established, deemed to be “endemic”, and therefore a national biosecurity response is unnecessary.
…
Anna Hopwood, who lives opposite Huon Aquaculture salmon pens, discovered the change online and is suspicious of the timing. “It seems very convenient to me to have to do that in the middle of a disease outbreak, and to not make the announcement until after it becomes effective.”
Last month, the Bob Brown Foundation released footage that appeared to show diseased fish being pumped from a salmon pen and separated into two bins – one an ice slurry for recoverable fish and another for unrecoverable fish, known in the industry as “morts”.
This week, Luke Martin, the chief executive of Salmon Tasmania, confirmed that salmon was being harvested for human consumption from infected pens.
…Given the incubation period for P. salmonis is 10 to 14 days, infected fish may not show visible signs of disease when they are harvested from pens.
Peter Collignon, an infectious diseases physician and professor at the Australian National University medical school, says that while P. salmonis “rarely if ever infects people” this doesn’t mean that there isn’t a broader risk to public health.
“The widespread use of antibiotics in waterways can cause resistance in other bacteria that can cause problems for people,” says Collignon.
“Using antibiotics in aquaculture is a problem. Residues are an issue, but the much bigger issue is the development and spread of superbugs. All use of antibiotics has a flow-on effect to other animals, people and the environment.
“A big problem is the lack of transparency by industry and our regulators – state and federal – [and] the public knowing how much and what types of antibiotics are used. This should be released regularly and not withheld for years or never appear at all.”
The Saturday Paper asked Tasmania’s Environment Protection Authority how many kilograms of antibiotics have been used, at which leases and pens and by which companies since the P. salmonis outbreak began. The response: “Current antibiotic amounts being administered by salmon companies and the number of pens treated remains commercial in confidence.”
Collignon says that commercial-in-confidence “is a ruse by industry so that the public never find out”.
This much is known: Huon Aquaculture, one of the three companies operating in Tasmanian waters, began administering antibiotics via fish feed at its Zuidpool lease in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel in February. On February 13, the company “proactively” notified local fishers that antibiotic treatment would take place, although it did not specify the amount of antibiotics being used.
This raises another important question: if fish are being harvested from infected pens, are the salmon companies observing the two-month withholding period required when antibiotics are used to treat infected fish?
When The Saturday Paper put this question to Luke Martin he paused and said: “Well, let me get you a better answer for that than from off the top of my head, because I’ve never had that one put to me. Where are you pulling that from? About the two months?”
That information was pulled from the Tasmanian government’s own “Piscirickettsia salmonis Information sheet”, which states, “If fish were successfully treated with antibiotics they would have to be held for a certain calculated period (approximately two months) before they can be harvested for human consumption.”
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