Can farmed salmon spread disease or parasites to wild fish?
Salmon farmers expend a great deal of effort to ensure they have healthy fish stocks (see Farmed Salmon Health). Farmers screen all their broodstock for disease, provide good water quality and nutritious feeds, and vaccinate the juvenile fish to stimulate their natural immune systems before they are brought to the ocean. Imported eggs undergo strict quarantine and multiple, redundant levels of protection and testing to ensure no exotic diseases are ever brought into BC. Farmed fish are therefore generally healthy and have a much higher survival rate than wild stocks. The only diseases that have been recorded on BC salmon farms are diseases that naturally occur in native BC fish populations (Kent & Poppe, 1998; Stephen & Iwama, 1997).
