Salmon farming is not just a dirty industry which does not routinely move its cages as it was supposed to do and which causes demonstrable benthic pollution. This pollution arises from:
- faecal agglomerations
- excess feed debris
- the leaching into coastal waters of the surplus chemical drenches delivered in token attempts to control the sea lice infestions that characterise life in the cages for the millions of fish that live and die in them.
More than all of this – despite all of this – the so-called aquaculture industry is a very powerful one.
It has just demonstrated its awesome muscle.
The grandly titled but feeble and supremely unassertive Scottish Environment Protection Agency [SEPA] has just agreed to stop publication of information it had only started to make available to the public – who badly need to have it.
So what is the information? Why do we need to have it? Who did SEPA agree with that they should cease publication of it? Why did they do so?
The information
This was in a reported data on the numbers of salmon dying in the salmon cages from the diseases endemic to the industry. These are mainly gill diseases and most commonly, amoebic gill disease.
The indefatigible Rob Edwards, Environment Editor at the Sunday Herald, revealed back in February this year the scale of the number of farmed salmon dying from these diseases, revealed in the data SEPA had made public.
- In 2010 5.5 million salmon died.
- In 2011 it was 6.8 million salmon – a rise of 23.6% on 2010.
- In 2012 it was 8.5 million salmon – a increased rate of rise at 25% on 2011.
The information need
Without this information – and without the information on sea lice infestations which the industry also seeks, largely successfully, to suppress and which have demonstrably harmed the wild salmon fisheries on the west coast – the general public has no idea what we mean when we describe this industry as a dirty one.
Worse, it is, by default, virtually licensed to be dirty by the spineless SEPA, by local authority planners and by the Scottish Government, which offers an industry proven to cause serious environmental damage an inexplicable degree of protection from scrutiny.
Aquaculture has been a growth industry – because it has been licensed to grow, often against well researched and sound objections from environmental campaigners.
It contributes to Scotland’s Gross Domestic Product [GDP] – which is a measure of economic performance most useful for supporting or confining state borrowing.
It does not contribute as strongly to Scotland’s wealth since most of the salmon farmers are extraterritorial, with their profits shipped out to shareholders elsewhere and not spent in Scotland.
The public whose votes periodically express their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with local authority and government performance, need to have such information in order to judge fairly the necessary watchfulness of those they elect to protect them and their environment.
Who pushed SEPA to censor this information on salmon deaths by disease?
According to Rob Edwards’ piece this Sunday, 13th October 2013, on documents he has seen, the Scottish Salmon Producers Organisation [SSPO] wrote to SEPS shortly after Edwards reported SEPA’s disease morts figures in February.
In highly accusatory tone, they went on instant attack, charging SEPA with ‘potentially placing information in the public domain which could be used to the commercial detriment or competitive market disadvantage of the companies submitting the data’.
SEPA meekly accepted the reprimand [?] from the errant industry whose salmon had died in their millions. He accepted that such information need only be submitted on a viluntary basis – meaning that SEPA is no longer even seeking to know how many farmed salmon are annually dying of diseases endemic to the intensely crowded life in the cages.
More than that, SEPA’s CEO, James Curran, told the salmon farmers that the figures on disease morts had now been removed from public visibility p and that from now on SEPA will ‘make a small change to ensure that these data are not included in the version released to the public.
SPEA published its ‘small change’ database on 1st October and Edwards notes that it includes the weight but not the number of disease morts – on the inevitably incomplete data voluntarily submitted.
Unsurprisingly, the published database omitted data on the sea lice that regularly infest the caged salmon and threaten the sustainability of the wild salmon fisheries.
Edwards quotes the Salmon & Trout Association Scotland’s solicitor, Guy Linley Adams, as saying that sea lice infestation data is something the Scottish Government can no longer defend failing to make a regular required reporting and publication matter.
The mystery destinations of salmon morts
The other issue arising from the number of disease morts, is what actually happens to the bodies?
The 8.5 million dying in 2012 is one hell of a lot of salmon. 6.8 million in 2011 and 5,5 million the year before are not numbers you can chuck behind the hedge.
The disgraceful reality here, as Ewan Kennedy, a former solicitor and doughty campaigner with the saveseilsound campaign, discovered in his researches [on which we published here on 17th February 2013], is that there appears to be no body statutorily required to regulate and oversee such disposals.
So no one does it. And no one knows – officially anyway – what actually happens to these annual millions of dead salmon.
Earlier in the year, when he published the figures on farmed salmon disease morts – here in Where have all the dead fish gone? – Rob Edwards rang around a number of local authorities to find out what they knew about the destination of the morts. Most could tell him nothing about it.
It is known that they are not supposed to go to landfill – but no one can be sure that they do not.
They may be incinerated – but no one knows if they are.
From his investigations then on this matter, Edwards said in his personal blog [and which we quoted in the article linked above] that he had been told that some tens of thousands of morts from an outbreak of disease at a farm or farms in the Western Isles had allegedly been sent to the fishmeal processing plant at Bressay in Shetland.
If this were indeed the case it would be a flagrant breach of European legislation.
The appearance of BSE in cattle was scientifically attributed to the feeding to herbivorous cattle of the processed meat from dead and diseased members of their own kind. The appearance of the human form of BSE, Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease, was a result of diseased beef products getting into the food chain.
It is clearly the potential consequence of feeding processed diseased salmon morts back to living salmon that lies behid the EU legislation in question.
We still do not know what happens to these millions of salmon dying annually from disease in the cages.
We do not know if the Scottish Government or SEPA have even asked the question.
SEPA has now agreed with those whose largely unchecked industry produces such deaths, that we should no longer even know the numbers of salmon dying from these diseases – which the salmon farmers may voluntarily report privately to SPEA – or not. And we will not know the farms where salmon deaths by disease may very regularly occur.
How can any of this be said to be acceptable environmental responsibility in government?
