Salmon farms bad for fish and environment

Dr Helen Flaherty, head of health promotion, Heart Research UK

AS a healthy alternative to meat, fresh salmon, with its omega-3 credentials has become increasingly popular.

Not long ago it was considered a luxury food, but aquaculture (aquatic factory farming) has made it the most popular seafood in the UK. Its popularity, however, comes at a cost to the environment and animal welfare.

Farmed salmon are selectively bred for quick growth and whereas their wild counterparts can swim for hundreds of miles and jump almost 12 feet, farmed salmon are severely restricted to their underwater, overcrowded cages where up to a quarter of them die.

Recent investigations have discovered that farmed salmon are frequently diseased, deformed, blinded and eaten alive by flesh-eating parasites.

Some were even found to have seaweed growing in their wounds. Fish are recognised as sentient beings and such suffering is totally unacceptable.

The billion pound industry is also detrimental to the environment.

Waste from salmon fish farms is killing marine life on the sea bed, causing poor water quality and encouraging the growth of harmful algal blooms which deplete oxygen from the water.

The filth in the water also necessitates to overuse of antibiotics, adding to the already recognised danger of antibiotic resistance in humans.

Fish rarely receive public attention but their appalling treatment in factory farms must not be ignored.

The Scottish salmon industry is set to double in size by 2030. Even so, Scottish government data admits that nearly half of Scottish salmon farms burn, dump and destroy millions of salmon a year and in 2019 5.8 million salmon mortalities were reported in the industry.

What a waste of life!

Elizabeth Allison died out almost everywhere.

In cafes, restaurants, markets, on trains, you name it, staff bestow an honorific on men, but not on women. Men (boys, even) repeatedly receive a mark of respect, while women either get nothing, or are called “love”, which would be fine if their male counterparts were called “mate”, but it is not the equivalent of sir.

I have heard the argument, flimsy indeed, that madam is longer than sir and thus harder to say!

In any case, ma’am is pronounced as one syllable, so the argument is meaningless.

To those people training staff who will deal with the public, please ask the staff to apply honorifics equally or not at all, and try to end this subtle but pervasive misogyny.

Cilla Grayson