TURN OF THE TIDE
With salmon farm scandals hitting the headlines, is the net finally closing in on the industry?
Michael Wigan sounds the death knell for salmon farms
Scotland’s signature fish, salmon, is ever newsworthy. Each week hatches another story. Press vigilance has now screwed down on caged salmon in our sea-lochs. There seems no end to the alarms and scandals.
If a picture is worth a thousand words then the newspaper one showing salmon carcases strewn over the road from a lorry that was carting them for incineration to England is especially potent. The death toll on Scottish salmon farms, by the industry’s own admission, now exceeds 10 million a year. Critics double the figure. The contest with lethal parasites has effectively been lost; they are eating the industry alive.
On top of mortalities hundreds of thousands of farmed salmon continue to escape, with 11,000 alien fugitives swarming up a protected river in Mull in August. In western Canada a similar stand-off took a dramatic turn when communities assembled to recapture escaped farmed salmon and prevent them interfering with the biggest natural migration into freshwater spawning in the world, that of Pacific salmon.
What if so many creatures died in poultry sheds, or pig units, or on sheep farms? The landscape would be littered with putrefying livestock. The public smells rotten fish.
The latest question surrounds the RSPCA’s quality assured label for Scottish farmed salmon. Can quality assurance really be appropriate given that mortalities are now measured in millions?
‘The death toll on Scottish salmon farms, by the industry’s own admission, now exceeds 10 million a year’
Salmon farmers pay the RSPCA handsomely for accreditation. The amount is linked to production volumes, so more is paid for higher output, or worse pollution. Conflicting aims? Two thirds of salmon farms are accredited, but the RSPCA will not say which. How then does accreditation have any public benefit?
The net is closing on the net-pen system. In Ireland, bowing to the tourism and the angling lobby, salmon farming has stuttered to a standstill. Expansion licenses were sought in 2011 in iconic Bantry Bay, but planning permission is still pending.
Time is catching up with caged salmon culture. In May the world’s lead salmon farmer, Norway, made continued salmon farming in fjords dependent on reduced sea lice levels. If the Norwegians, the original pioneers, are cold-shouldering marine net-pen systems, why does Scotland blithely continue?
The Norwegian method is in stark contrast to our own freewheeling system where the watchdogs are now lapdogs. In Norway the industry itself pays for controlling escapements in rivers, and also recapturing escaped salmon at sea. Farmed fish are all traceable with genetic markers, so no-one can plead ‘Not Mine’.
Sterile fish, incapable of hybridising with wild ones, are encouraged by financial rewards. Land-based salmon farms, where the future lies, pay no license fees and licenses are unlimited.
These strictures explain why the international salmon farm industry, almost entirely Norwegian-owned, is targeting Scotland. This is the last government-supported sanctuary for new mega-farms colonising sea-lochs.
Newspapers have recently uncovered deceptions and untruths emanating from government to protect their pet industry. Government tried to conceal the true state of sea-lice infestation, with most farms vastly exceeding parasite limits.
Not only has our government, which is coerced by the industry and its chemicals suppliers, been shielding salmon farmers, it has been caught out in backstage arm-twisting of the independent regulatory body SEPA to reverse recommended bans on salmon farm chemicals which kill shellfish. Environmental protection was duly watered down.
As for conservation, that is for anglers. They release their wild salmon catches while government policies obliterate the same fish in western Scotland and the northern Isles.
The reason salmon remain so newsworthy is that their treatment highlights a central paradox. A supposedly nationalist government is prepared to ditch its own recreational anglers in favour of a bullyboy non-EU litterlout.