According to farmed shrimp expert Donald Lightner in a speech made to the World Aquaculture Society meeting in Nashville, early mortality syndrome (EMS) is probably "an infectious disease."
"The disease is idiopathic; we really don’t know if it’s infectious or toxic, but all indications are that it’s infectious," said Lightner.
"All the work that we’ve done so far keeps pointing toward the very likely idea that it’s an infectious disease and not something from an environmental toxin….We don’t think Vibrios are the primary agent of the disease because they only become dominant as opportunistic pathogens in the terminal phase.
"We
