Pancreas Disease found in central Norway

Lerøy Seafood Group ASA (OSE: LSG ) notified the stock exchange last week that pancreas disease (PD) had been detected in one of the facilities of a wholly-owned subsidiary Lerøy Hydrotech AS, which farms salmon in Nordmøre region in Norway . Pancreas disease has cost Norwegian, Scottish and Irish aquaculture industry hundreds of millions in the past few years and the industry is looking to grow resistant fish population.

Lerøy Hydrotech has been actively involved in efforts to try to prevent the spreading of the disease from South to Central Norway. During a routine checkup of fishes from Kråkøya facility in the municipality of Aure, traces of PD were found in some of the fishes. Book value for the fish stock at the Kråkøya facility is 33 million NOK. Fish samples from other companies in the region have also been taken for PCR analysis.

After this event Lerøy Seafood set out to do tests on other facilities in the region and according to a stock exchange release from today, the virus was detected in one other facility. The book value of the stock of fish in that particular facility is 27 million NOK. Lerøy Seafood is in discussions with the Norwegian Food Safety Authority for closing down and slaughtering the entire biomass in the affected farms.