Top UK chefs join campaign to take farmed salmon off the table
THREE award-winning and game-changing UK chefs have today announced support for a new campaign calling on chefs and restaura...
WildFish in Scotland is challenging Scottish Ministers to justify their frequent claims that open-net salmon farming, as practised in Scotland, is “sustainable”.
In recent weeks this has become the mantra of Rural Affairs Cabinet Secretary Mairi Gougeon in correspondence with WildFish, answers to parliamentary questions and in instructions to Professor Russel Griggs who is now carrying out a review of salmon farm regulation.
In 1987, the United Nations Brundtland Commission defined sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
The newly published Green Claims Code by the Competition and Markets Authority is clear that environmental “claims must be substantiated”.
Andrew Graham-Stewart, Director of WildFish Scotland, said: “Increasingly Scottish Government, in particular Rural Affairs Cabinet Secretary Mairi Gougeon, is claiming that salmon farming in Scotland is ‘sustainable’. This is a bold assertion that we are now challenging. If Scottish Government is unable to substantiate the assertion, then, quite simply, it is guilty of blatant greenwash.
Nick Measham, CEO of WildFish, commented: “No amount of greenwashing can alter the evidence that open-net salmon farming kills wild fish and pollutes the marine environment. Sea lice and escapes from salmon farms are helping drive many populations of the west Highlands and Islands’ wild Atlantic salmon and sea trout to the brink of extinction. This alone is enough to demolish claims of sustainability without all the other impacts on marine life and the food chain being taken into consideration. This industry ranks amongst the worst environmental disasters in Western Europe.”
WildFish Scotland has formally written to the Cabinet Secretary, asking her to justify in detail her repeated use of ‘sustainable’ in terms of the operation of salmon farming in Scotland, by providing substantive direct answers to the questions below.”
For all enquires, please email Andrew Graham-Stewart at directorscotland@wildfish.org
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