Injection Vaccination – a standard practice

by Ragnar Thorarinsson

Commercial application of injectable vaccines for Atlantic salmon started in the mid- to late eighties and became an industry wide practice with the advent of the first oil-based vaccines from Alpharma in the early nineties. Today, virtually every single salmonid fish in the Northern hemisphere is injection vaccinated prior to sea cage transfer.  Chile today appears to be on a fast track joining the rest in this regard. Since 1990, nearly 2 billion salmonid fish have been injection vaccinated world-wide.  Over half of all these fish have been vaccinated with oil-based vaccines from Alpharma.  This very extensive use of our vaccine products in 10 countries has taught us to better understand the added value produced by applying quality standards to the vaccination procedure.

Learning and sharing

Vaccine suppliers are typically contacted when the clients experience a perceived problem in the performance of their fish due to vaccination.  Alpharma is no exception in this regard.  When a client contacts us greatly concerned about his or her livelihood, we promptly send a technical representative on site that is qualified to follow pharmacovigilance guidelines to help establish:

1.    All the facts regarding the history of the population affected including information about the current health status. 

2.    Identification of the potential and/or most probable causes.  

3.    Help put together recommendations with the sole objective to prevent a similar problem in the future.  

Although we always maintain strict client confidentiality, it does not prevent us from sharing our experiences when helping other clients. 

Quality and Control – a way of life

Increased focus on quality, predictability and traceability in recent years from consumer markets and organizations, continues to stimulate salmon producers world-wide to implement quality assurance schemes, set quality standards and traceability programs.  An integral part of implementing such a program involves the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) concept i.e., establishment of critical control points based on initial hazard analysis.  When implemented and executed as intended, HACCP becomes an integral part of an overall QA/QC system including traceability - and risk management programs which ultimately lead to reduced risk, improved safety and economic predictability.

Risk – the challenge to control

Intensive finfish aquaculture has a number of external and internal risk factors associated with it. Whereas external risk factors include non-manageable elements such as future market prices, internal risk factors can be managed in such a way that they are either significantly reduced or eliminated and should ultimately lead to improved economic predictability. 

The life cycle of intensively reared Atlantic salmon from “egg” to “fork” involves many “hazardous” interventions, all of which pose inherent risks.  The list is long but the most critical interventions include grading, seawater transfers, disease treatments, transport to slaughter and last but not least injection vaccination.  Failure to properly understand and control any of these necessary interventions can result in losses. 

Risk of Vaccination Process – need to improve

There are a multitude of variables, other than vaccine selection, which can adversely affect the value and the outcome of the injection vaccination.  We believe it is valuable to discuss these variables and share our experiences with our clients. The result became a full day vaccination seminar which we first ran in Scotland in November 1999.  Since then, we have conducted six seminars in Scotland and one in Ireland and we are absolutely delighted with the overall positive response from the over hundred participants to date.

Vaccination seminar – the objectives

The seminar programme aims to educate our clients in current best practices, and share our mutual experiences. We have tried to limit the number to 15 participants in each seminar to promote open and constructive discussions. The seminar objective is to provide our clients with the tools required to design site-specific QA/QC programs that can easily be implemented in order to improve the quality and consistency of the process as a whole with minimal disturbance to vaccination efficiency.  This effort demands that we are selective and prioritise when having to produce the necessary paper trail such programs unavoidably require.

Vaccination seminar – brief outline

The day is divided into sections, each focusing on different aspects of the injection vaccination such as:

• History of fish vaccination and vaccination methods.

• Elements other than the vaccines that affect fish safety and immune response.

• Vaccination techniques, process and procedures.

• Human safety.

• Manual vaccination versus automated equipment.

• 'Pros' and 'cons' of the “wet” versus the “dry” method of vaccination.

• Importance of hygiene and hygiene practices.

• Vaccine handling and quality.

• Side effects caused by vaccines versus vaccination procedures.

• Organization and clarification of responsibility.

• QA/QC protocols, vaccination records and audits.

Each seminar participant is provided with a folder containing all the information presented including all the pictures, data sheets and support material required to design and implement site-specific standard operating procedures (SOP) and a quality assured/controlled vaccination program together with the client's veterinary surgeon.