Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and committee members.
Clare Backman is my name. I'm a registered professional biologist. I have a bachelor's degree from the University of British Columbia. I've worked for both levels of government over the last almost 30 years, mainly in the field of salmon restoration, salmon conservation, and most recently, for the last 10 years, as the sustainability director for Marine Harvest Canada.
I want to go over a few points about our existing business and some of the ways that we are involved in environmental management, but before I do, I just wanted to straighten out a couple of points from earlier testimony.
I think on April 12 it was suggested that wild sockeye moving past farms in the early part of the decade, farms where the fish had an IHN virus, could have been negatively affected. The IHN virus is actually called the sockeye virus or the sockeye disease. Most sockeye salmon carry it in British Columbia, so it's not possible that they could have been exposed simply by passing by a salmon farm that was unfortunately experiencing that disease. That's just basic biology, which I think was left out at the time.
The second point is that it was suggested that sea lice on our fish are showing signs of Slice resistance. We have a chemical that we apply to the salmon, and I'll speak about that in a moment. Our company has seen absolutely no evidence of sea lice resistance to the Slice product. I'll cover that in a moment in a little more detail.
On April 14 the provincial veterinarian mentioned a couple of important things about sea lice and about the differences between Atlantic and Pacific sea lice. I'll just touch on those briefly. I think he mentioned that the Atlantic and Pacific lepeophtheirus salmonis, the sea louse of concern, is quite different in the Pacific from what it is in the Atlantic, as much so as chimpanzees and human beings are different genetically. He pointed out that this is likely the result of the experience that we've had in the Pacific area. The experience has been that the sea louse has not been the major concern on our Atlantic salmon here that it has been on Atlantic salmon in Europe.
Second, much of the research that has been done in the last few years has determined that Pacific salmon have the ability to mount an immune response to sea lice infection. They can actually shed the sea lice that are attached to them. The Atlantic salmon doesn't have that ability, so the Pacific salmon is actually less subject to damage than the Atlantic salmon is. Taken together, this information has led a lot of the researchers who are working on this area to now begin to see that sea lice are perhaps not as strong a problem as was originally felt.
It was also mentioned that the origin of sea lice is from the wild fish returning from the Pacific Ocean back to spawn. That's how they originally get onto the farms.
Having made those points, I don't want to suggest that we're not doing anything about the sea lice on our fish. We are in fact taking great measures to control and manage the sea lice. I brought along some information, and that information is contained in some papers that you can look at. They show clearly how our pattern of controlling sea lice ensures that the level of sea lice on our farmed salmon is very low when the wild fish are out-migrating as small juveniles. We're asked to meet a threshold of no more three sea lice per fish; we actually go much lower than that. You can see on the graph that during the spring season over the last number of years, the oviparous--that is, egg-bearing female--sea lice count on our fish has been maybe one or less than one.
The point I'm trying to make here is that we're paying close attention to managing our sea lice, and we're doing a good job of keeping the sea lice off our fish. Therefore, they can't transmit sea lice to the wild fish when they're out-migrating in the spring.
We're also participating with the researchers who are doing the work to look at the wild fish as well. I've provided information on those graphs to show you that the wild fish monitoring of the little guys when they're leaving in the Broughton Archipelago, which has been going on year over year, has also shown a precipitous decline in the infestation of sea lice on the wild fish. In 2008-2009, the DFO basically reported that there was pretty much zero effect, zero impact, from sea lice on the pink salmon in the Broughton area.
The point here is that the sea lice management is ongoing and it's effective.
I'll move a little bit now towards the issue of--