MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chilean Senators ask for tougher measures against salmon virus

Chilean Senators are calling on authorities to take tougher measures toward preventing the ongoing spread of Infectious Salmon Anemia, ISA, a highly contagious fish virus that has caused major problems for Chile's 2.2.billion US dollars farmed industry.

Last week, Senators Antonio Horvath and Baldo Prokuria, both members of the center-right National Renovation party, presented a bill before the Senate's Fishing Committee asking that fines be increased against companies or individuals found responsible for allowing diseases such as ISA to spread. The bill also calls on government authorities to distinguish between minor and major transgressions. "The over-concentration (of the salmon industry) that has occurred in some areas of our country, principally in the Lakes Region (Region X), and the social, economic and environmental affects that have been caused by the proliferation of certain diseases such as ISA… make it necessary to guarantee legal measures that apply to everyone involved in the industry," the bill reads. "In the case of ISA," the document goes on to explain, "the disease has cost the industry 77 million US dollars in one year and left more than 1,000 people in the aforementioned region out of work." The bill requires that any company planning to move fish from one zone to another must first pass through so-called "sanitary barriers." Fish, in other words, must be tested for diseases as well as parasites, such as Caligus (sea lice), which have also been a serious problem affecting Chilean farmed salmon and trout. ISA has had a major impact on Chile's once booming farmed salmon industry during the past eight months, as the disease – first detected last July in fish farms off the coast of Chiloé – continues to spread among the area's highly concentrated aquaculture centers. Until recently the outbreak was thought to be contained within Region X, which houses the lion's share of the industry. Last December, however, ISA was detected on a fish farm in Region XI, an area also known as Aysén. The government's National Fishing Service has since confirmed an outbreak of the disease on a second Aysén farm. The discovery of ISA in Aysén is bad news indeed for the farmed salmon industry, which due to overcrowding in Region X had been looking to expand heavily into the relatively clean and disease-free waters of Region XI. The Santiago Times