Major salmon farmer Cermaq has announced that it will be conducting further tests on a new Pharmaq live vaccine for salmon rickettsial septicaemia (SRS) alongside other existing SRS vaccines in an ongoing effort by the company to reduce mortality rates of Chilean farmed salmon.
The newest trail for the Pharmaq vaccine is slated to commence during the third quarter at the R&D Center in Colaco, with trials on other vaccines to run congruently in Chile, the company said in a statement. As of now, it is “still too early to tell if these vaccines are successful,” Cermaq noted.
The vaccine trials are just one SRS-fighting initiative that Cermaq is currently involved with – the company is also working with the Pincoy Project, which aims to identify and combat the risk factors for SRS and sea lice at each stage of production, and reduce the use of antibiotics among Chilean salmon farms by 50 percent over the course of two years.
Cermaq has made its fresh water and farming sites available for Pincoy developments, and has vowed to share information developed by its R&D team – including SRS characterization, virulence factors and sea water survival rates of the bacteria – to help further the initiative. Other companies involved in the project include Skretting, Aquagen, Blue Genomics, Pharmaq, Centrovet, Blumar and Ventisqueros.