MSPs In Hot Water Over Scottish Salmon

THE names of the salmon farms worst hit by the ‘sea-lice crisis’ have been released to Salmon & Trout Conservation Scotland (S&TC Scotland) after it emerged, earlier this year, that the weight of Scottish salmon farmed in the last three months of 2016 dropped significantly. The identities of the farms were initially withheld by Scottish ministers.

- Annunciata Elwes

Farms that supply a number of UK supermarkets, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Co-op, are among those that have breached the trigger levels for numbers of adult female sea lice on farmed salmon, in some cases with up to 20 times the acceptable amount.

‘The data that Scottish Government didn’t want anyone to see shows that salmon farms have been permitted to operate with breathtakingly high lice numbers for weeks or months on end,’ says Guy Linley-Adams, solicitor to S&TC Scotland. ‘To date, no meaningful enforcement action, such as the ordering of culls or immediate reductions in fish-farm biomass, has been taken against serial offenders.’