Video shows ‘tonnes of dead salmon’ being removed before MSP visitAn animal welfare charity says it filmed tonnes of dead and dying salmon being removed from a fish farm just hours before MSPs visited the site.
Members of the Scottish Parliament’s rural affairs committee visited Dunstaffnage fish farm near Oban on Monday for a fact-finding mission.
The committee is holding a follow-up inquiry into how the sector has changed since a damning report in 2018 raised environmental concerns.
Animal Equality UK has accused the fish farm operator of trying to paint a “wholly inaccurate” picture of the industry but Scottish Sea Farms insists the footage shows “routine” operations.
Representatives from the salmon farming industry are due to appear before the committee next week.
A spokesperson for the committee said it had heard concerns about fish mortality on salmon farms during its inquiry, and added: “This footage raises further questions for the committee.”
BBC Scotland News understands that the removal of the fish on Monday morning was not discussed with MSPs.
Abigail Penny, executive director at Animal Equality UK, has accused the industry of wanting to “hide the truth” rather than tackle the serious issues it faces.
She says the industry still does not have a handle on the parasites and diseases “running rampant” through fish farms, which she believes are too densely stocked.
She added: “We urge the committee to see the industry for what it truly is: deceptive and deadly.”
Scottish Sea Farms, which operates the site, insisted the footage showed teams following standard operating procedures by regularly removing dead or dying fish.
It said the number of fish removed each time would vary between pens and from day to day.
But it insisted it had “categorically not” had a mass mortality event.
The company also said it had engaged in a “full and open discussion” with MSPs during their visit.
Head of fish health and welfare, Dr Ralph Bickerdike, said: “Contrary to the claims made by Animal Equality UK, this is an essential part of our duty of care and something we do daily wherever conditions allow, whether we have a farm visit scheduled or not.”
Scottish salmon is the UK’s biggest food export, worth £578m in 2022.
But the number of fish dying on farms has been increasing, with a record 17 million salmon deaths reported in Scotland last year.
Warm sea temperatures have led to a significant increase in micro-jellyfish which cause harm to farmed salmon.
There are also long-standing concerns around parasitic sea lice and the use of chemical treatments in open waters.
In 2018, Holyrood’s environment committee concluded that Scotland’s marine ecosystem faced “irrecoverable damage” from an expansion in fish farming.
A report by the regulator Sepa, in the same year, found that almost one in five salmon farms in Scotland failed to meet statutory environmental standards.
Another report, by the Scottish parliament’s rural economy committee, made 65 recommendations for improvement but stopped short of backing a moratorium on new fish farms.
The current inquiry is examining to what extent those recommendations have been implemented.
Salmon farming in Scotland is one thoroughly rotten industry.
The industry owned predominately by three big foreign companies these salmon farms are marine cess pits of disease.
Typically, deaths through lice, infection and phisical disfigurement is around 60% of all fish despite huge use of pesticide and hormone treatment.
The environmental damage through ethromycine application also kill all the shell fish on the seabed not just below the pens but down tide from the pens.
Local fishermen and environmentalists have been campaigning hard against this but money, big money talks.
Indeed, in a vicious strategy imported from the USA one of the biggest producers just recently implemented a SLAPP strategy whereby the sought and secured an interdict against a campaigner Don Staniford whereby he was restricted from making any comment in the media or on social networking, was restricted from accessing the sea and going anywhere near a fish farm in his canoe, was restricted to fly a drone over fish farm air space.
Breaching any of the foregoing the penalty of breach of interdict is immediately to jail.
And SLAPP, well that’s an acronym for Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation. Put in more robust language it means we are a big billion pound turnover business, you are an individual and we will sue the ass of you with every legal ploy at our disposal.
Thankfully, Don Staniford got support from a pro bono team of civic minded legal specialists and the restriction on him accessing the high seas or air space has now been lifted. But that is how big companies plunder the very environment in which we live and chill and cow the local populace into submission.
If people truly knew the disease ridden hormone filled conditions that this chlorinated chicken of the sea actually is then they would be appalled. But for large part they don’t.
And then of course the battery farmed salmon are sold all over the world to folks who have no idea of the real provenance of the fish.
Ah well, next time you look at the lovely scenic sea escapes with their fish farms glinting in the sunlight, spare a thought for the absolute disease ridden chemical toilet that lies underneath.
By the way, those Labour parliamentarians who took time off from from their Liverpool conference at the weekend to see a football match at Anfield were guests of … the salmon industry. Just saying.
Yes, a very apt point. Iain Murray and Anas Sarwar accepting a VIP football freebie at Anfield whilst the Labour conference was on is utterly damning of not just these two Labour politicians but also of the Scottish Salmon trade body.
Buying influence is what this is about and clearly these two are up for it. You certainly have to marvel at the chutzpah of these two finding time during Conference to be wined and dined of a Saturday at a VIP football event.
Below is a statement of bilge from Salmond Scotland’s Web site. Open trouser pockets, it hasn’t taken these two long, or the rest of the Labour great and good to the good life.
But to get back to Labour’s new found corporate friends, a quick look at who these friends are and what the say and do is absolutely frightening.
With the reality of around 60% of All farmed salmond dying through disease and disfigurement despite industrial quantities of antibiotics, pesticides and hormones,the body corporate has a major health and environment problem.
Missing eyes, open scabs, lice eaten, their fish pens are cess pits of misery that moreover pollute the wider environment.
No wonder they employ aggressive abusive litigation against those who would try to speak out. And what better way than to stop people being able to access the supposedly open seas, or speak. It’s utterly fascist.
And what better too than buying labour politicians like Murray and Sarwar. Easily bought top as has now been exposed. Not that they, or the rest of them think that.
Anyway, recognising the utterly appalling mass fish death rates and the industrial dumping of fish carcasses here is an extract of the utter BILGE that the industry puts on its Web site.
“On Scottish salmon farms, certified vets prescribe antibiotics only when they are really needed to protect the health and welfare of the fish, just like a doctor would do for a human patient.
“Through good practice, vaccinating young salmon and maintaining a naturally healthy environment, the need for antibiotics is kept to a safe minimum. Any antibiotics that do need to be used are only done so under licence by the Scottish environmental regulator, SEPA.”
I tell you, if 60%, of the Labour politicos were dying with disfigurement, flesh eating lice, and losing eyes, they might not be so happy to be seen filling their boots with industry largesse.