“Scottish FARMED salmon”

This week, we submitted our objection to the proposed relabelling of “Scottish Farmed Salmon” to “Scottish Salmon” to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). This application, which caught many animal campaigners by surprise after quietly sitting on DEFRA’s website for 3 months without them noticing, is a clear attempt to mislead the public about what it is they’re buying.

Here’s what we said:

Animal Concern is an animal welfare charity, who for decades have sought to educate the public about the disastrous impact of fish farming on the environment and on fish welfare. Through high profile exposés via media such as BBC Countryfile, documentaries such as Seaspiracy, and undercover footage by animal welfare groups which has been featured in national newspapers in recent years, the public are beginning to understand the realities of salmon farming.

In 2022, 15.7 million fish died before they reached slaughter – that’s one in every four fish. As a mortality rate, this is eight times higher than that of chicken farming – an animal that has all the same legal protections as fish under the Animal Welfare and Animal Sentience Acts. The reasons for this are many and include:

·      infestations of sea lice which rapidly spread through fish farms due to high stocking densities causing the fish to be literally eaten alive;

·      nutrient-deficient feed which is dyed pink in order to artificially replicate the flesh colour of healthy, wild salmon (a means of deceiving the public into thinking these fish were healthy);

·      tight containment of these naturally migratory fish, meaning they are often swimming in their own excrement, encouraging the spread of diseases like amoebic gill disease or ammonia poisoning from inhaling toxic levels of their own urine;

·      the fish wastage being left to percolate down to the seabed, infecting the surrounding marine environment and whatever is growing there;

·      increased rates of microjellyfish and algal blooms due to rising water temperatures, poisoning the fish as well as the surrounding ecosystems.

Another side effect of fish farming is the attraction of natural predators – in particular seals. As an organisation, we fought hard for the illegalisation of seal shooting in Scotland by fish farmers. However, there are still today open investigations where fish farmers are suspected to have shot healthy seals on Scottish salmon farms for finding their way into the pens.

In short, this industry is cruel, bloody and toxic and the public deserve to know that this is where their salmon has come from. It seems the applicant is trying to dupe consumers into thinking their salmon could possibly have been fished in the wild, so that they do not feel complicit in all the environmental and fish cruelty problems of farmed fish and are more disposed towards buying it. Wild salmon is available to buy in UK supermarkets from places like Alaska, which more morally conscious customers are starting to prefer. They may not know that it is illegal to sell Scottish wild salmon, and could be fooled into thinking that if the word “farmed” is missing from the packaging, that must mean it has been wild-caught in Scotland.

Dropping “farmed” from the labelling would be tantamount to dishonesty or, at best, a lack of transparency, taking away the customers’ power to choose whether they are buying cruel and unsustainable produce or not. It would be false advertising by any other name, and we urge you to refuse this application (as well as better publicise such applications in future).