Fishy Business

The Fishy Scottish Salmon Farming Industry

The Scottish Salmon Industry has been around for over 40yrs.

It is now proven to be:

Unsustainable

Unaccountable

Unregulated

Despite Scottish Government & Industry rhetoric on environmental performance, fish welfare and how the product is healthy - it is now clear that we have an industry out of control, delivering nothing more than poor quality fish, lies, pollution and is supplying leakages of cash to unscrupulous offshore owners and investors.

The Scottish Government are unable to provide NET PROFIT return figures from the Scottish Exchequer, despite numerous enquiries for information.

Proper accountable regulation is sadly lacking in vital areas: animal welfare, waste disposal, environmental damage and harm to wild species. Even so, the industry has shown it cannot expand without breaking rules on chemical use and stocking limits.

This website aims to explore, examine and report on the workings of Scottish salmon farming and raise awareness of this reprehensible industry.

Learn More

The Fishyness

Atlantic salmon you see in the shops are "battery farmed". You have no option other than that. All slogans such as "Sustainable", "Organic" etc have been proven false.

They are densely stocked in floating 40m cages in Scottish sea lochs, up to 70,000 fish in each. A typical 12 cage farm will have up to 1 Million salmon in close proximity.

In over 40yrs, virtually NONE of the waste has been cleaned up.

But we also have a situation where our Government ministers are hell-bent on expansion of the industry, while all along they cannot provide a total or broken down figure for Net Profit. For all we know, the industry could be running at a loss.

To further complicate matters, disease and sea lice burdens on the feedlots at sea result in mass mortalities.

Between 1 in 3 and 1 in 4 fish have died at sea in the last 10 years.

Still the ministers uphold the myth of "sustainability" and that the product is of the highest quality.

Currently Scotland receives no direct tax benefit from the profits made by salmon farming companies in Scotland. HMRC collects corporation tax and how this is returned to Scotland is as yet unclear.

The overwhelming majority of Scottish salmon farming production (99%), is owned and operated by more than 75% offshore interests.

It is now clear that the government have no place to hide. Following two reports commissioned to investigate the detrimental effects of Salmon farming, the lack of regulation and commitment to fish welfare & environmental quality has been exposed.

They say that "the status-quo is not an option", but it appears that this is because fish losses are holding back production and the means to expand.

It isn't clear what the future is. Do we take these massive feedlots onto land in tanks as Recirculating Aquaculture Systems (RAS) with the possibility of watercourse pollution, more disease & mass mortalities & possible escapes - or put them out to "high energy" sites offshore where escapes are almost guaranteed and full automation means low employment?

And what do we feed these fish? Stocks of wild fish ingredients are running low - talk of even breeding flies on domestic waste are now touted.

So, we have witnessed parasitic infestations, disease outbreaks, algal blooms, even jellyfish wiping out hundreds of thousands of fish. Yet, there are no clear answers and the money is still being poured in.

Hopefully this website will help you to decide what should happen.

More...