“3/27/2008, 4:35pm EST”
Virus infects Chile's salmon. (Drinking game edition!) →
Okay, we’re going to play a game. Every time you notice an expression and/or consequence of humanist-capitalism, you have to take a shot. Go!
A virus called infectious salmon anemia, or I.S.A., is killing millions of salmon destined for export to Japan, Europe and the United States. The spreading plague has sent shivers through Chile’s third-largest export industry, which has left local people embittered by laying off more than 1,000 workers.
It has also opened the companies to fresh charges from biologists and environmentalists who say that the breeding of salmon in crowded underwater pens is contaminating once-pristine waters and producing potentially unhealthy fish [unhealthy for humans].
Some say the industry is raising its fish in ways that court disaster, and producers are coming under new pressure to change their methods to preserve southern Chile’s cobalt blue waters for tourists and other marine life.
“All these problems are related to an underlying lack of sanitary controls,” said Dr. Felipe C. Cabello, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at New York Medical College in Valhalla that has studied Chile’s fishing industry. “Parasitic infections, viral infections, fungal infections are all disseminated when the fish are stressed and the centers are too close together.”
Industry executives acknowledge some of the problems, but they reject the notion that their practices are unsafe for consumers. American officials also say the new virus is not harmful to humans.
But the latest outbreak has occurred after a rash of nonviral illnesses in recent years that the companies acknowledge have led them to use high levels of antibiotics. Researchers say the practice is widespread in the Chilean industry, which is a mix of international and Chilean producers. Some of those antibiotics, they say, are prohibited for use on animals in the United States.
Many of those salmon still end up in American grocery stores, where about 29 percent of Chilean exports are destined.
Hehe [hiccup]… I goin t sleeeeep now. dusnfl
Never leave home without it.
