Making a stance

Sir, The history of this industrialised farming of the sea started as small units run by local businesses.

Gradually competition and overproduction resulted in buy-outs by larger companies so that today the industry is run by multinationals. It is a similar story to chickens, egg production and other intensive food sectors, which are running into trouble meeting food and safety standards.

We all know of the spread of disease. The more crowded the environment, be they chickens, salmon or pigs, the more likely they are to exhibit a catalogue of disease, waterborne or airborne.

Crowded conditions encourage both the populations of disease organisms and transmissivity of diseases. Think of Glasgow and TB in the early 20th century, chickenpox epidemics in primary schools, malaria and standing water etc.

The use of tributyltin as an antifouling agent banned 30 years ago in inshore waters and small vessels is still present and active in seabeds.

The recent concern about bees and neonicotinoids, which are a relatively new class of insecticides, is that they share a common mode of action that affects the central nervous system of insects, resulting in paralysis and death.

So what of salmon farming and the fight against the course of nature? Increasing biomass per farm, increased use of neurotoxins to control sea lice, antibiotics, changes in the marine environment and affects on the ecosystem are all now clear and catalogued.

At the same time farmed salmon in the supermarket has reduced in price progressively, artificially coloured yellow/orange by chemically produced carotenoids in the feed, containing double the fat content of wild salmon, fed by using fish oils often from Antarctica, palm oils (cheaper) and cereals (the fishmeal and fish oil from wild fish in fish feed have been partly replaced by vegetable ingredients).

Wild salmon might be a super food, farmed salmon certainly is NOT.

The use of neurotoxins which are harming shell growth in shellfish is now of serious concern.

I believe we must all make a stand to protect the inshore waters of Scotland; in fact the whole inshore system of the UK, as wrasse capture is clearly a problem now in England.

The salmon companies are offering all sorts of incentives to local communities to support the farms.

Unless we stand firmly in our belief that truly sustainable fisheries are the way forward for Scottish inshore waters, we are colluding in the destruction of the life support system for the planet, which is our marine environment.

The choice is short-term profit for a few or a longterm positive strategy for improving Scottish marine waters, local fisheries, and small communities.

Yours, Sally Campbell Lamlash