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WTF???? Australia's carp herpes plan dubbed 'serious risk to global food security'
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UK academics say introduction of herpes virus could also cause ‘catastrophic ecosystem crashes’ in Australia
A truckload of dead carp collected from the Murray river in South Australia
Calla Wahlquist
@callapilla
Friday 24 February 2017 06.14 AEDT Last modified on Friday 24 February 2017 06.16 AEDT
Scientists in Britain have raised concerns about Australia’s $15m plan to release a herpes virus in the nation’s largest river system to eradicate carp, saying it poses a serious risk to global food security, could cause “catastrophic ecosystem crashes” in Australia, and is unlikely to control carp numbers long term.
In a letter published in the Nature Ecology and Evolution journal this week, University of East Anglia researchers Dr Jackie Lighten and Prof Cock van Oosterhout say the “irreversible high-risk proposal” could have “serious ecological, environmental, and economic ramifications.”
The Australian government allocated $15m in the 2016 budget to a national carp control plan, centred around a plan to release the koi herpes virus into the Murray-Darling river system to kill common carp, or Cyprinus carpio.
It followed extensive research by the CSIRO, which conducted seven years of tests to ensure that native fish, birds, amphibians, and other species in the river system could not contract the virus.
Lighten and van Oosterhout say the use of the carp herpes virus should not be compared to the release of the myxomatosis virus to control the rabbit population, arguing: “compared with the biocontrol of terrestrial vertebrates, the biocontrol of large, highly fecund aquatic animals such as carp adds novel risks.”
Australia commits $15m in bid to eradicate carp using herpes virus
They argue that laboratory tests “cannot rule out the possibility of cross-infection” and that the virus will have “an enormous evolutionary potential” once released in the wild, and could evolve to attack other species.
FULL ARTICLE:
[link to www.theguardian.com (secure)]
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