Just stop eating this awful product

As yet another academic paper is published on the damage being caused to wild salmonids by sea lice emanating from fish farms, particularly reducing the marine survival of wild Atlantic salmon (read more here), the salmon farming industry spends its time lodging grubby appeals with Scottish Ministers against SEPA’s attempt at introducing its (albeit woefully inadequate) Sea Lice Framework (for more about the Scottish salmon farmers appeal click here). 

Successive Scottish Governments have enabled the salmon farming industry to expand rapidly without meaningful safeguards to protect the environment and wild salmon.

Indeed, SEPA’s belated Framework is itself already being investigated by Environmental Standards Scotland, as a result of a complaint lodged by WildFish (read our complaint).

This time, a meta-analysis by academics of published and unpublished studies spanning the period 2001 to 2019 has concluded that:

“the effect of salmon lice is larger than the average effects across years reported in earlier randomised control studies”

and that this conclusion:

“emphasises the need for the sector to have effective sea lice management such that there is no increase in lice- induced mortality of wild salmonids as per the international goal of the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Organisation. The findings are also relevant for the conservation goals set for Atlantic salmon under the EU Habitats Directive in river stocks potentially susceptible to this pressure”.

Exactly what WildFish has been saying for years.

In the species reassessment released in late 2023 by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species the main UK population of Atlantic salmon was reclassified as endangered – meaning those populations are threatened with extinction (read more here).

Make no mistake, the Scottish salmon farming industry, as it is currently run – as it has been run and inadequately regulated for decades – is driving many wild Atlantic salmon sub-populations inexorably towards extinction.

And the multinational corporations behind this industry do not care. The appeals to Scottish Ministers make that crystal clear.

There’s no pretence any more.

So, we need to call time on this awful industry.

Make sure your friends, colleagues and family know that buying, eating or serving up farmed salmon is completely unacceptable.

We all need to take farmed salmon Off the table now!

To find out more, follow the link below.

By: Guy Linley-Adams

Solicitor