Fury over seals killed at M&S salmon farms
MARKS & SPENCER was facing a backlash last night after it emerged the store sells salmon from farms where seals are routinely shot dead.
Around 170 seals were killed at Scottish salmon farms used by the chain between 2013 and 2014, figures show.
Scottish Seafarms, which supplies the Lochmuir salmon range exclusively for M&S, killed 56 of the total number under licence by the Scottish government.
The figures were only released this week following a court ruling, after a lengthy battle between campaigners and the ruling Scottish National Party.
The farmed salmon industry is worth around £500million a year to the economy north of the border, and ministers had wanted to keep the ‘commercially sensitive’ data secret.
Fish farmers can currently apply for a licence to cull seals – which can attack their salmon by chewing through netting.
More expensive ‘ predatorproof’ netting can be installed – but this can cost around £40,000 per fish farm. ‘Seal scarers’ – alarms that frighten off seals – are another more humane option for controlling them.
Don Staniford, of the Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture, said: ‘The salmon farmers say they shoot seals as a last resort. But we say, “How can it be a last resort when 87 per cent of farms don’t have antipredator nets?”
‘The consumer doesn’t realise that the price they pay for cheap farmed salmon is the lives of seals on our coasts.’
He said his group intends to protest at M&S stores by dressing up as ‘zombie seals’.
Other suppliers which have shot seals include Grieg Seafood Hjaltland, which killed 36 according to the figures.
The firm has sold salmon to Tesco and Morrisons.
At just one of Grieg’s farms in the Shetlands, Laxfirth Voe, 20 seals were shot between February and July 2013. Four more were killed between May and August 2014.
The firm said it hoped new ‘eco-nets’ would mean it would not have to shoot so many – but it could not rule out occasionally killing a ‘rogue seal’.
Grieg’s regional director, Sigurd Pettersen, told a local news magazine that seals had killed around £2million worth of the company’s salmon.
But he said the new nets mean ‘we are pretty sure we’ll never be in a situation where we have to kill 30-40 seals in a year’.
A spokesman for the Scottish government said: ‘ The level of seal shooting has reduced by 56 per cent overall between 2011 and 2014 and in fish farms specifically has reduced by 66 per cent in the same period.
‘All fish farms which have applied for a seal licence already employ at least one, and many a range of non-lethal alternatives, with shooting to be used only as a last resort.’
An M&S spokesman said: ‘Neither we nor our salmon farmers have any wish to see seals or any other sea life harmed. We have led the industry on this issue and invested time and money to avoid this happening.
‘ The RSPCA supports our approach, and is equally concerned about the welfare of farmed salmon as well as animals such as seals.’