Alert over supermarket salmon sea lice threat

Leading chains urged to dump stock after fish farm bug shock

SUPERMARKETS are being urged to take off their shelves salmon that may have been infested with parasites.

Many fish farms have been inundated with sea lice at levels more than three times the national limit, figures show.

The Scottish Government tried to block the release of the figures, which pinpoint the producers with the worst records.

But in a victory for campaigners, the Information Commissioner of Scotland has ordered their publication.

At one point this year, Greig Seafood, which supplies Tesco, registered an average of 29 lice per fish at its farm on North Havra, Shetland. Industry good practice advises the level should be no more than one and the trigger for enforcement action is eight.

Guy Linley-Adams, of Salmon & Trout Conservation Scotland (STCS), which requested the figures, said: ‘We will write to supermarkets asking them to stop selling salmon from the worst-performing farms.

‘The true extent of the failure to control sea lice is astonishing and it is abundantly clear why ministers tried so hard to prevent these figures coming out.’

He added: ‘Farms have been permitted to operate with high lice numbers. To date, no meaningful enforcement action, such as the ordering of culls, has been taken against serial offenders.

‘The Scottish Government has a legal duty to protect and conserve wild salmon and sea trout, but this data shows it is failing to rein in the biggest threat [they face].’

The pests thrive in the farms which are commonplace around the coastline and lochs and they spread into surrounding waters.

There is not believed to be any danger to humans as lice live on the salmon’s skin, which is removed. But epidemics wipe out tons of farmed stocks every year.

STCS director Andrew Graham-Stewart said: ‘It is no coincidence that, for example, mature sea trout in the west Highlands and Islands has all but disappeared.

‘The industry needs to move to closed containment systems in tanks either on land or floating in the sea, providing biological separation between the farmed fish and the wider environment.’

The data gives details of excessive levels at more than 60 of Scotland’s 250 farms between November 2016 and August this year.

Score Holm on Shetland – also run by Greig Seafood – recently had three consecutive weeks at above 20 lice per fish.

Furnace Quarry fish farm on Loch Fyne, Argyll, owned by Coop supplier The Scottish Salmon Company, had levels of 23 and 21.

Scott Landsburgh, chief executive of the Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation, said the industry ‘continues to work hard to improve and invest in new management approaches’, but added that the lice levels had ‘little or no impact on fish welfare’.

A spokesman for the shops body British Retail Consortium said: ‘The seafood industry agrees on the need to accelerate adoption of effective sea lice controls.’

The Scottish Government had objected to the release of the information, saying it could harm the industry. But a spokesman said: ‘Our new compliance policy aims to strengthen controls on farmed fish by redefining measures for the prevention, reduction and control of sea lice on farms.’