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Seafoods are important to Indigenous peoples along BC’s Pacific coast. In addition to providing nutrition, seafoods like clams, mussels, and crabs are culturally important to Indigenous well-being through connections to land, water, animals, family, nation, and community.

Clam gardens use traditional farming and harvesting methods. Archaeologists have detected evidence of clam garden sites in some communities that date back thousands of years. First Nation community bonds and connections are strengthened by participating in harvests, preparing foods, using traditional family recipes, and eating together. 

Our changing climate and human activities increasingly threaten these seafood sources. For example, naturally occurring marine biotoxins and bacteria like Vibrio are found more often with rising global temperatures and can lead to seafoods becoming unsafe to eat.

The BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) is partnering with the First Nations Health Authority (FNHA) on an Indigenous led project called WATCH. WATCH, or We All Take Care of the Harvest, is a seafood and climate change project focusing on shellfish and other seafoods.

Four different First Nation pilot communities are participating in this project:

• Metlakatla (North Coast),
• Malahat (southeast Vancouver Island),
• Klahoose (Discovery Islands and adjacent fjords), and
• Tseshaht (Port Alberni area and west coast Vancouver Island).

For communities to prepare and adapt to our changing global climate, they need to assess threats by looking at their seafood diets and local environmental conditions where seafood species live. During a planning phase, the traditional ecological knowledge of communities will be shared along with evidence-based learnings to understand the factors and health dangers linked to eating seafoods. For instance, in Washington State, tribal nations and researchers have learned that eating razor clams contaminated with low doses of one type of marine toxin, domoic acid, can lead to memory loss.

WATCH is consulting local and international experts in marine science, ecology, climatology, Indigenous fishery managers, public health, phytoplankton monitoring, marine virology, satellite imagery, regulators, laboratory methods, social scientists, and others to provide guidance on creating and optimizing monitoring and surveillance for seafoods. 

In the monitoring phase that has started this year, communities are learning how to identify phytoplankton species—microscopic algae/plants—that produce marine biotoxins.

They are testing their local marine waters for salinity, oxygen, temperature, and nutrients to find out what factors lead to harmful algal blooms in their harvesting areas. Currently, access to biotoxin testing is limited because it is expensive and under-resourced in First Nation’s shellfish harvesting areas. Monitoring will allow the pilot communities to decide for themselves when seafoods are safe to consume and allow them to communicate to their members when it is not a safe time to harvest.

BCCDC’s Environmental Health Services team (Lorraine McIntyre: food and shellfish safety specialist, Kathleen Mclean: environmental scientist and data, mapping guru, Mike Lee: epidemiologist, and others) are assisting the project by improving existing resources, such as our shellfish harvesting map, to make it easier for people to identify what shellfish harvesting areas are closed for shellfish harvests. We are including pilot communities into our sea surface temperature maps used to trend temperatures in shellfish harvesting areas.

BCCDC is also preparing evidence reviews to identify health issues linked to traditional seafood diets and climate change impacts on seafoods.

When shellfish poisonings occur, it can be life-threatening. People who consume shellfish contaminated with saxitoxins, the toxin that causes Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning, may require immediate medical intervention. This odorless toxin isn’t destroyed by cooking, and you can’t tell if it’s in shellfish, which is why it’s so important to harvest in safe areas.

We are working closely with our colleagues at the BC Drug and Poison Information Centre to improve surveillance for calls about seafood poisonings so we can alert regulators and public health. If you think you have shellfish poisoning, call them at 1-800-567-8911.  

Funding for this work was provided to FNHA by the Health Canada Climate Change HealthADAPT program and the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Infectious Disease and Climate Change Fund.

The post Safer Seafoods for Coastal BC First Nations Communities appeared first on Pacific Public Health Foundation.

“… partnership with the BC Ministry of Health to facilitate the amended Food Premises Regulation, whereby micro and small food processors in BC have become required to support BC food processors in developing, maintaining, and following written Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP)-Based Food Safety Plans and Sanitation Plans. To assist food processors, throughout 2015-16, we offered a suite of activities, including development of workbooks, videos, and other materials, full day training sessions by food safety specialists, and a phone support system to help guide BC processors in writing their HACCP-based food safety plans and sanitation plans. This significant initiative is making the province safer by improving food processing safety and sanitation.”

To learn more about BCCDC Foundation activities, you can read the full 2015-16 annual report on our website.

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Workshop

Dr. Naveed Janjua and team have been awarded funds for “CDPC National Knowledge Exchange and Consultation on Supervised Consumption Services”, that together with funding from other sources, will facilitate a 2-day meeting to accelerate local efforts in BC to put together integrated supervised consumption services plans and facilitate a better understanding of the application process given the barriers posed by the Respect for Communities Act. The meeting will also enable a greater understanding of actual issues that arise when operating a supervised consumption site by featuring the direct experience of Vancouver’s Insite and Dr. Peter Centre. All of this will result in the development of a policy brief written by the CDPC and the Legal Network, with the primary goal to directly impact the rate at which SCS applications are being processed by Health Canada.

Blue Sky

Dr. Victoria Cook and team have been awarded funds for “Engaging clients in the field: WelTel Outreach” that, together with funding from CIHR, will use a digital health platform to improve communication between members of the outreach team and their clients. The goal is to enhance continuity of care and client documentation for electronic patient charts.

Dr. Jennifer Gardy and team will be working on “Genomic Epidemiology of Non-Tuberculous Mycobacterial Infection in Cystic Fibrosis”.  The project will provide a better understanding of the modes of acquisition of drug-sensitive and drug-resistant NTM infection in CF patients in BC and will help inform infection control practices in CF clinics.

Dr. Linda Hoang and team have been awarded funds for “Tracking plasmids in carbapenemase-producing organisms in British Columbia“. The aim of the project is to evaluate an alternative method of obtaining unambiguous plasmid sequencing data for CPOs to assist in tracking drug resistance in DNA to better inform infection control and prevention. These funds are for a small section of a much larger study that was awarded funds from Genome BC.

Dr. Natalie Prystajecky and team have been awarded funds for “Improving Food Safety in BC with Enhanced Surveillance of Salmonella Enteritidis (SE) via Whole Genome Sequencing“.  Together with funds from multiple sources, the goal is that the food safety threat and it’s significant burden to the healthcare system, agri/food industry and economy can be reduced by implementing an enhanced surveillance program that utilizes routine whole genome sequencing for cluster identification and source attribution.

BCCDC Faculty interested in applying for funding, be sure to watch your email inboxes in February; the next round of applications will be reviewed in April 2017. To see some of our past research successes, click through to our main research page on our website.

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