The laboratory tests of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have confirmed the presence of the highly harmful mollusk disease in the oysters of Egmont de Pei Bay.
“This is the first confirmed case of Dermo in Pei,” the agency said in a press release issued on Friday night. “Dermo does not represent a risk to human health or food safety, but it can cause a greater mortality of oysters and a decrease in growth rates.”
In a separate email, CFIA also said that the tests had confirmed the first cases of Dermo and MSX for the province of Quebec, in samples of oysters collected in Chaleur Bay.
Eight months have passed since what was considered the first Dermo detection in Canadian waters, in Ostras de Spence Cove, about five kilometers west of the Confederation bridge in New Brunswick.
Disease or dmo perkinsosis, caused by a parasite called Perkinsus Marinus, It had been previously detected in Atlantic waters between Mexico and Maine. It affects cultivated and wild oysters (Virginic crassostrea).
More than 80 of the wild oyster harvesters of the island had to find new places to fish after MSX’s parasite forced the close of Bedeque Bay last year. As Nancy Russell of CBC reports, the pressure to find more oysters has meant that some rivers are being fish, and that could mean not catching next spring.
“Perkinsosis’s outbreaks usually occur with warm summer water temperatures above 20 ° C,” says an informative sheet of the British government about the disease. “The clinical signs can include pale, open, mantle glands away from the outer edge of the peel and stunted growth.”
The CFIA press release said that Dermo “does not affect other bivalve in this area, including mussels, scallops or clams.”
Already dealing with MSX
The news of the positive results of the Egmont Bay tests will be another blow to the island’s oyster industry, which has been recovering the discovery of MSX last July, abbreviation of Sphere Multinucleate Sphere Sphere Sphere.
That oyster disease was first detected in samples of the Bedeque Bay of Pei, with more confirmed cases in other areas of the province in the following months. Like Dermo, it only affects oysters and not humans who eat water oysters that are known to have MSX.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says that the parasite that causes Dermo is easily transmitted among oysters, mainly when they are between one and three years of age.
“Mortality rates are variable, but are typically 50 percent to 75 percent,” says the agency on an information sheet on its website.
CFIA has power to limit movement
In a statement to CBC News last month, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency acknowledged that he had been asked to prove Oyster Pei samples to Dermo, but said he had no results to share at that time.
The agency continued to describe what would happen if the samples gave positive.
If a product on a PCZ [primary control zone] It is considered a potential risk, its movement would be controlled.– Canadian Food Inspection Agency
“To prevent the propagation of Dermo or any other animal disease, the CFIA can establish a primary control zone (PCZ) in areas where a disease occurs,” said the statement.
That type of movement would allow the agency to control how oysters are handled and sent inside and outside the area.
“For example, if it is considered that a product on a PCZ is a potential risk, its movement would be controlled; this means that a CFIA permit will move this product inside and outside the PCZ,” said the statement.
“Any new PCZ would be published as soon as possible on the CFIA website. When a new PCZ is established, the CFIA also notifies its provincial partners, interested parties, indigenous communities and industry through pre -existing communications channels.”
