One year on from the Government’s agreement that “the status quo is not an option” in the Salmon farming industry and it’s business as usual for the unregulated polluter.
Fergus Ewing & Roseanna Cunningham are found wanting in all areas of environmental protection, fish welfare and lack of concern for the marine ecosystem and wild fish, including lumpfish and wrasse.
Read the Salmon & Trout Conservation Scotland Report here:
https://www.salmon-trout.org/2019/03/06/scottish-gov-inertia-anniversary-of-salmon-farming-parliamentary-report/
We do have some good news though. From some intrepid FOI appeals by Corin Smith, the Government has changed its requirements for reporting on Sea Lice, Mortality Numbers and Case Reports from quarterly to monthly. This should ensure more timely reactive action in the welfare and treatment on feedlots. All data is still self-reported of course, no intervention in these matters has changed.
Details: https://www2.gov.scot/Topics/marine/Fish-Shellfish/FHI/CaseInformation
What now? Well, Cunningham has been found attending a Marine Scotland / SSPO event to promote Women in Scottish Aquaculture (WiSA), an exclusively female group aiming to attract women into and support women in the sector.
It’s a desperate move to rustle up some PR finesse but nonetheless quite strange. With the exception of the duplicitous Hamish MacDonnell (who seems to only be interested in pies recently), all the frontline stooges of the industry are female. Will the rapidly growing repulsion to toxic farmed Salmon products be softened by this movement towards greater sexual equality?
Cunningham has also been actively avoiding any dialogue with any concerned member of the public, whilst appearing on Twitter condemning the Brexitshambles to congratulate celebrity foodies when they criticise US chicken chlorination.
Not a pleasant thought but of course one will have the choice whether to import it, stock it, eat it or tolerate it.
Meanwhile, Norwegian Salmon in our Scottish lochs have no such say when they are bleached ALIVE with Hydrogen Peroxide.
One wonders how the horrendous prospect of US Transgenic Salmon will be viewed by Cunningham if indeed they ever land on Scottish shores? Lets hope these “frankenfish” are rejected with the same revile as chlorinated chicken. One redeeming feature of Transgenic triploid salmon however is that they are all sterile females and cannot pollute the genetic DNA of our wild fish any more than it is already: https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/08/politics/fda-approves-sale-genetically-engineered-salmon/index.html
It has been revealed that 99% of the Salmon industry operating in Scottish waters is Norwegian. And whilst we wait for confirmation of how many million litres of Hydrogen Peroxide have been desperately discharged into our “pristine waters”, it is safe to say that these Salmon do not have an option on the status quo.
Through FOI, we have found out that SEPA are compiling figures for H2O2 and until they do (end of March), we’re not privy to any.
Luckily Don Staniford already obtained some, and it is truly astonishing:
Hydrogen Peroxide use leaped from 19,000 litres in 2005 to 19 MILLION litres in 2015.
But SEPA tell us it is increasing, so watch this space.
Clearly the Scottish Government are in a quandry over this. Without appeals or public pressure they are unable to commit to promises they made to tighten up regulation and they are unable to commit to any meaningful conservation measures to protect wild Salmonids, wrasse or lumpfish. Despite Scottish Aquaculture telling us they have “completed the reproductive loop” in lumpfish rearing, we have yet to see a stop to wild harvesting.
Just why isn’t the Government Secretary for Rural Economy not splenetic at the loss of jobs and revenue that wild Salmon & Sea trout decimation has brought? And why is our Cabinet Secretary for Environment (etc) not giving keynote speeches at the Marine Science Conference on the trailblazing work Scotland is doing to investigate wild fish decline and reinstatement?
These are not questions anyone pro-Salmon farming likes being asked. These are also questions which transcend politics - they are apolitical.
And we’re about to find out some answers very shortly....
