CFIA orders ISA infected salmon destroyed

Harbour Breton plant in Newfoundland shutting down for extended period

Nov 08, 2013 CBC News

picture: NovaNewsNow.com

Cooke Aquaculture is shutting down its Harbour Breton salmon processing plant in the wake of an order by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) to destroy a large number of its ISA-infectedsalmon, CBC News has learned.

CFIA previously confirmed the ISA outbreak at the company's Hermitage Bay facility back in June, but the company had hoped to grow out and process some of the stock.

Cooke spokesperson Nell Halse said this latest depopulation order now means there won't be enough market-sized salmon currently available to operate the Harbour Breton plant.

"We brought in our employees yesterday and they have been given notification of a layoff. It's really all about loss of fish, or lack of market-ready salmon to go through the plant," Halse told The Fisheries Broadcast.

"Really, our hope had been we would have been able to grow the rest of the fish out to be able to market and harvest them. But we had been experiencing some mortalities and so we now have this depopulation order."

'"We brought in our employees yesterday and they have been given notification of a layoff. It's really all about loss of fish, or lack of market-ready salmon to go through the plant."- Cook Aqua's Nell Halse