RE: Fish virus hits Great Lakes

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: Pamela's Protest
Date: May 26, 2007 10:39 PM


By Bob Grant

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NEWS
Fish virus hits Great Lakes
The latest invader of the largest freshwater system is spreading to surrounding waters, causing officials to enact emergency rules


[Published 24th May 2007 03:51 PM GMT]


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A highly contagious and deadly disease that has plagued fish in the Great Lakes for at least two years is ravaging that lake system and has spread to fish in other freshwater lakes and rivers in the region, prompting officials to issue emergency rules and strengthen existing regulations to slow its march.

The virus, viral hemorrhagic septicemia virus (VHSV), is not native to the Great Lakes region, so it's hard to predict how damaging it will be to the area's fish, said Rod Getchell, who studies fish diseases at Cornell University's aquatic animal health program. "It's [infecting] naïve hosts, and it's a pathogen that's in a new environment,' he told The Scientist. "That's the scary part. We don't know what kind of effect it's going to have on populations.'

Many fish species die soon after being infected with VHSV, but the disease seems particularly virulent in the Great Lakes, where it has killed several hundred tons of fish over the past two years in Ohio, New York, and Michigan, according to USDA statistics.

The virus has already spread to the Saint Lawrence River, and managers fear that the disease could make its way into the Mississippi River drainage system.

Earlier this month, managers at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources discovered VHSV in two dead freshwater drum from Little Lake Butte des Morts, a small lake in northeastern Wisconsin that is part of the Lake Winnebago system.

Last week, Michigan Department of Natural Resources officials announced the presence of VHSV in black crappie, bluegill, and muskellunge that died in a large April fish kill in Budd Lake, a small water body on Michigan's lower peninsula.

This month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) amended a Federal Order specifying restrictions on the transport of fish between state and Canadian provinces known or suspected to harbor the virus. APHIS also issued an emerging disease notice last year detailing the extent of VHS incursion into U.S. inland waters.

State officials in Wisconsin and Michigan have also tightened restrictions on the translocation of fish and water between separate water bodies.

Last week, Wisconsin expanded its emergency rules, stressing that people drain all water from boats, buckets, and other containers before moving between water bodies, and prohibiting the translocation of bait fish from areas infected with the virus.

"Don't carry live fish out of these areas that we think are infected and don't bring any suspect bait into areas that we think are not infected,' Bill Horns, Great Lakes fisheries specialist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, told The Scientist.

VHS is not a threat to humans who handle or eat infected fish.

The virus has infected dozens of fish species from several families in the sprawling Great Lakes system and surrounding waters, and this disregard for taxonomic boundaries is one of the troubling aspects of the disease, said Getchell. "That just means that the virus can maybe infect every species. Recreationally important species, such as walleye and largemouth and smallmouth bass, have tested positive for VHSV, as have channel catfish, the most profitable aquaculture species in the U.S.

VHSV, an RNA rhabdovirus, has long been a problem for trout aquaculturists in Europe and has been documented in marine fishes on both the east and west coasts of North America.

The virus attacks endothelial tissues in host fish, causing hemorrhaging in blood vessels, eyes, and internal organs. It is shed through fish urine and feces, surviving for up to 14 days in water to infect the gill tissue of new hosts.

The Great Lakes form of the virus was detected in 2005, first in the Bay of Quinte, a narrow zigzagging channel on the Canadian side of Lake Ontario, and then in archived samples from fish caught in 2003 from Lake St. Clair, which straddles the U.S.-Canada border near Detroit. Additional Lake St. Clair fish tested positive for VHS in 2005.

Some experts suggest that the virus was introduced into the Great Lakes through bilge water offloaded from oceangoing vessels. One 2006 paper proposed that the Great Lakes isolate is a mutated form of VHSV seen in fish on the east coast of the U.S. and Canada.

The Great Lakes system is no stranger to invasive species, with non-native species like zebra mussels, rusty crayfish, and sea lamprey altering ecosystems there for years. Horns said that the updated VHSV regulations will help control the spread of other invasive species. "A lot of the things we're trying to do through our rule-making could just be called good boat hygiene or responsible resource management activities that can not only help prevent the spread of [VHSV], but other invasive species as well,' Horns told The Scientist.

Bob Grant
mail@the-scientist.com

Links within this article:

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/fish/pages/vhs.html

Freshwater Drum - Species Summary
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=3577

Michigan Department of Natural Resources
http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,1607,7-153-10371_10402-168753--,00.html

Black Crappie - Species Summary
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=3388

Bluegill - Species Summary
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=3375

Muskellunge - Species Summary
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=3375

USDA - APHIS, "Amended Federal Order viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS),' May 4, 2007.
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.php?id=3375

USDA - APHIS, "Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia in the Great Lakes,' Emerging Disease Notice, July 2006.
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/vs/ceah/cei/taf/emergingdiseasenotice_files/vhsgreatlakes.htm

Michigan Department of Natural Resources, "Fish Disease Control'
'http://www.michigan.gov/documents/dnr/FishDiseaseControlOrder-FO-245-Final_195763_7.pdf

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, "The Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia virus (VHSV) in Wisconsin,' May 17, 2007.
http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/fish/pages/vhs.html

USDA - APHIS, "Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia (VHS) Virus (V)-Susceptible Species,' October 2006.
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/vs/aqua/pdf/vhs_susceptible_species.pdf

E. Elsayed et al, "Isolation of viral haemorrhagic septicaemia virus from muskellunge, Esox masquinongy (Mitchill), in Lake St Clair, Michigan, USA reveals a new sublineage of the North American genotype,' Journal of Fish Diseases, October 2006.
http://www.the-scientist.com/pubmed/17026670

B. Palevitz, "The continuing saga of invasive species,' The Scientist, April 2002.
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/12990/

E. Russo, "Cooperation urged on invasives,' The Scientist, March 2004.
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/22062/

RE: RE: Gov't posted 38,700 Social Security numbers

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: ♥ Angel ♥ ™
Date: Apr 28, 2007 12:01 PM


Thanks: Guinea: The 1930's Smut Peddler



Gov't posted 38,700 Social Security numbers
Data was of all recipients of Agriculture Department grants since 1996


WASHINGTON - The Social Security numbers of 38,700 people who received Agriculture Department grants have been posted on a government Web site since 1996, but they were taken down last week.

Free credit monitoring is being offered to those affected.

The security breach was only noticed last week and promptly closed, the Agriculture Department and Census Bureau announced Friday.

The Agriculture data that included Social Security numbers were removed from the Web on April 13 and similar data from 32 other agencies were taken down April 17 as a precaution, said Agriculture spokeswoman Terri Teuber.

A review has determined that none of the other 32 agencies had a similar problem, said Sean Kevelighan, spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget.

“There is no evidence that this information has been misused,” Teuber added. “However, due to the potential that this information was downloaded prior to being removed, USDA will provide the additional monitoring service.”

The breach was discovered by Marsha Bergmeier, president of Mohr Family Farms in Fairmount, Ill. “I was Googling my farm name at 11 p.m. when I couldn’t sleep,” she said in a telephone interview, and details of her land loan came up in the second listing of the Google search, a private Web site that reposted the government data.

‘It’s still out there in the world’
The next morning, April 13, she contacted the Agriculture Department, her congressman, Rep. Tim Johnson, the private Web site and the Census Bureau and was surprised by how quickly they removed the personal information.

“If somebody downloaded it, it’s still out there in the world,” she said. “That will never be a private number again.”

Chris Hoofnagle, senior attorney at the University of California at Berkeley law school clinic on technology, said the only federal law violated by such a breach is the Privacy Act, but the Supreme Court had ruled last year that victims could only collect damages for measurable losses to ID thieves, not merely for anxiety.

Nevertheless, the incident is likely to spur passage of a federal law requiring notification of potential victims when personally identifiable information is disclosed or stolen electronically, Hoofnagle predicted. Already 35 states have such a law.

When the breach was reported to the Agriculture Department on April 13, there were Social Security numbers for 47,000 recipients of grants from the department’s Farm Services Agency and from USDA Rural Development on a public Web site maintained by the Census Bureau.

Extent of breach downgraded
The department originally said Friday the Social Security numbers of 105,000 to 150,000 individuals had been entered into federal databases open to the public since 1981. But by Friday evening, USDA downgraded that number to 63,000, and then again on Monday to 38,700.

"USDA staff continued analysis of the identification numbers throughout the weekend and determined that approximately 38,700 actually contain private information," the department said in a news release.

The data has only been posted on the Internet by the Census Bureau since 1996.

The Census Bureau collects the grants made by 33 federal agencies and posts them on the Internet without analysis. By law, the names of these recipients and how much money they got are public records.

The disclosure comes six months after a congressional report found federal workers at 19 agencies had lost personal information affecting thousands of employees and the public, raising concerns about the government’s ability to protect sensitive information.

Growing problem
In all, the House Government Reform Committee reported 788 incidents involving the loss or compromise of sensitive personal information since Jan. 1, 2003. That was in addition to the “hundreds of security and privacy incidents” at the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to a report the committee issued in October.

Teuber said the two Agriculture Department programs involved gave each grant a 15-digit identifying number. Included among those digits was the recipient’s 9-digit Social Security number. There was nothing on the Web site that indicated the grant number contained the Social Security number, but the recipient who reported the problem recognized her Social Security number in the grant number, Teuber said.

To avoid revealing information that could increase the vulnerability of this private data, Teuber said Agriculture was not releasing more details, including the Web address, of the government site where this information was disclosed until all potentially compromised recipients have been notified.

The Agriculture Department is sending registered mail notifications to 150,000 recipients identified as having been part of the public database since 1981, but Teuber said some people are on the list more than once.

At an estimated taxpayer cost of $4 million, Agriculture is offering each of them free credit monitoring for one year, Teuber said.

USDA funding recipients who wish to take advantage of the credit monitoring offer will receive instructions on how to register. Any USDA funding recipient with questions may call 1-800-FED-INFO (1-800-333-4636) or visit http://USA.gov. The call center operates from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. EDT, Monday-Friday.

Under supervision of the Office of Management and Budget, the grant numbers posted by the other 32 agencies were taken down and reviewed to see if any included Social Security numbers. “We are sure no other agencies ... were impacted by similar problems,” said OMB’s Kevelighan. He attributed the quick response to government-wide safeguards set up after the Veterans Affairs Department problems last year.

Teuber said an unknown number of private Web sites had downloaded and reposted the information, but she said at least one of them, OMB Watch, had also removed the identifying grant numbers.

OMB Watch director Gary D. Bass said Bergmeier contacted his group April 13 after finding her number on the Web site of his public interest group. The group referred her to Agriculture and Census, where it got the data.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18234540/