by Bill Heaney
Green MSP Ariane Burgess had asked her what the Scottish Government position is on whether voluntary reporting of mortality data in the salmon farming industry provides sufficient transparency and animal welfare protection.
The Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Land Reform and Islands told her: “More data is collected and published on salmon farming in Scotland than on any other farming sector.
“There are statutory requirements to report increased mortality, and a voluntary reporting mechanism supports fish health surveillance that is undertaken by the fish health inspectorate.
“Data is proactively published and is sufficient for regulatory purposes. Although numbers do not protect welfare, statutory protection, industry standards and regulatory powers do, and those are in place.
“Official guidance will be introduced to further progress welfare standards. The Animal and Plant Health Agency is responsible for considering potential breaches in welfare legislation, and suspected cases of poor welfare are also referred to the agency.”
Ariane Burgess pressed on: “Given that in 2025 the fish health inspectorate found that more than 400,000 fish deaths had gone unreported across 27 incidents; that gill disease mortality had increased sharply and that companies reported fish culls to shareholders but not to the Government, will the Government commit to mandatory mortality reporting for all deaths before permitting further expansion of salmon farming?”
Mairi Gougeon replied: “In relation to Ariane Burgess’s point about culling, I would just say that, as with other types of farming, producers sometimes need to humanely cull stock for operational or commercial purposes or to try to achieve better welfare outcomes for the individual fish, instead of considering only progression to the next phase of production.
“Right now, the Scottish Government does not collect complete data on the number of fish that are culled at salmon farms, but in exceptional circumstances, culling is required to mitigate the risk of listed diseases that could have significant local or national impact.
“Culling is primarily a result of operational decisions, and reporting on it is not required for the fish health inspectorate’s surveillance programme for aquatic animal disease, unless the cull relates to increased or unexplained mortality.
“We require data to be collected for a number of different purposes. We believe that the data that is published, whether it be voluntarily or due to what we require through regulation, is suitable for those purposes.”
Tory MSP Edward Mountain told MSPs: “I congratulate the industry on complying with the recommendation of the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee’s report from 2018 on providing data.
“The problem is that, for nine years, the industry provided figures for total weight of fish loss, and now they go on numbers of fish lost. Will the cabinet secretary speak to the industry to see whether it can continue to report in the way that it did for nine years and not break what is a sequence of very useful data?”
Mairi Gougeon told him: “I am happy to look at that issue further and follow it up with Edward Mountain. The numbers are important, but I will have to consider the issue further.”
