Animal welfare charity, Animal Equality UK, has claimed to have captured footage of dozens of dead salmon being removed from a Scottish fish farm just hours before Members of the Scottish Parliament’s rural affair committee visited the site on Monday. The Scottish Sea Farms, however, defended their actions and stated that such removals were a “routine” part of its operations. The company also confirmed that it “categorically not” had suffered a mass mortality event.
The rural affairs committee is currently holding a follow-up inquiry into how the fish farming industry has changed since it conducted an environmental inquiry in 2018. Representatives from the sector are due to appear before the committee next week. Concerns regarding the mortality rate of fish in the farms have been voiced in the past, with a record 17 million fatalities reported in Scotland in 2020.
According to a spokesperson, the incident “raises further questions” for the committee, which has also received reports on the harm caused to farmed salmon by micro-jellyfish and concerns over the increased use of chemical treatments in open waters. In 2018, a Holyrood’s parliamentary committee warned that the expansion of Scottish fish farming could lead to “irrecoverable damage” to the country’s marine ecosystem.
Scottish salmon accounts for the UK’s largest food export, valued at £578m in 2022. Last year, almost one in five salmon farms in Scotland reportedly failed to meet statutory environmental standards. The current inquiry is assessing the extent to which 65 recommendations made in 2018 for industry improvements have been implemented. Despite stopping short of backing a moratorium on new facilities, its conclusions revealed deep concerns about the sector’s impact on the environment
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