What’s happening in aquaculture in the UK and around the world
THE Scottish aquaculture industry needs better communications, both within the industry and with government, a leading fish vet told a sector conference recently.
Ronnie Soutar, re- cently appointed head of veterinary services at Scottish Sea Farms, was giving an update from the Strategic Farmed Fish Health Framework Working Group, on which he sits.The group is a bringing together of industry and government against a background of developing the industry’s programme of growth, and it is actively supported by Rural Economy minister Fergus Ewing, said Soutar.
Addressing fellow vets and other fish health professionals at the Fish Veterinary Society’s conference outside Edinburgh in March, he said ‘we are now being seen as a body of authority that must be consulted’.
The health framework group, co-chaired by Marine Harvest’s Ben Hadfield and Marine Scotland’s Colin Moffat, is due to agree a strategy this spring, so ‘the timescale is very tight’, but being driven by the minister, said Soutar.
There had been a lot of negative press in the past six to 12 weeks, he noted, with the backdrop of the ongoing Holyrood inquiry into salmon farming.
The industry needed to address the issues raised by this investigation, and the process of doing so must be transparent.
The main objectives of the strategic farmed fish health framework include improving farmed salmonid marine survival; maximising farmed salmonid health and welfare; innovation and research; and improved communications.
Soutar said it would be ‘a major step forward having a fish health framework in Scotland’.
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