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Great Lakes Fish Hit by Deadly Virus Outbreak
WASHINGTON, DC - The U.S. Department of Agriculture has prohibited the importation of certain species of live fish from Ontario and Quebec into the United States because of an outbreak of viral hemorrhagic septicemia, VHS.
The emergency order from the department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, APHIS, also prohibits the interstate movement of the same species from the eight states bordering the Great Lakes - New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
VHS is a destructive pathogen that produces internal hemorrhaging and death. The disease does not pose a risk to people, but it has been found to affect fish species previously not known to be susceptible, including baitfish species, coho salmon and channel catfish.
Dead and diseased wild fish have been reported in Lakes Ontario, St. Clair and Erie as well as the St. Lawrence River. An outbreak was also reported last month in fish from New York's Conesus Lake, a body of water in the Great Lakes watershed but without direct connection to the lower Great Lakes.
APHIS officials say they do not know how the disease arrived in the Great Lakes area. One theory is that VHS may have mutated from a marine form and become newly pathogenic to freshwater fish.
"With the number of the potentially susceptible fish species still growing, new fish species affected by this emergency order will be updated as necessary to prevent the further spread of this disease," APHIS said in a statement.
Since spring 2005, fish die-offs attributed to VHS have occurred in Lake Ontario, Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair. The die-offs have affected muskellunge, smallmouth bass, yellow perch, bluegill, crappie, gizzard shad, freshwater drum, round goby and other fish species.
VHS has also been detected in samples of walleye, white bass and other species that were not part of a die-off.
"If additional disease monitoring and testing is what willhelp safeguard these resources, we stand prepared to do so," said Bret Marsh, state veterinarian for Indiana, one of the states affected by the emergency order.
"VHS is not a threat to human health and has not yet been detected within our state," said Marsh, "However, it poses a significant economic risk to private aquaculture and we must do everything necessary to prevent its spread."
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