Scottish Salmon is So Not Organic!

Take the Sainsbury's 'Taste the Difference' Salmon Challenge – don’t give fatty farmed salmon to your dog let alone your children! https://t.co/s7itnIaTTL @sainsburys @SainsburysNews @ScotlandMowi @SoilAssocScot @SoilAssociation @rspcaassured @SSPOsays @FergusEwingSNP pic.twitter.com/WyBRuTefGe

— Don Staniford (@TheGAAIA) March 3, 2021

Please join people all around the world in boycotting farmed salmon – take the salmon pledge today. And take the cookery challenge to see with your own eyes the difference between healthy wild salmon and fatty farmed salmon.

It's painfully obvious that there is a world of difference between factory farmed salmon and healthy wild salmon.

Next time you're in a supermarket just look at the label of 'organic' salmon and you'll see it's over 19% fat – that's fattier than pizza!

How can you seriously promote 'organic' salmon as "healthy" when it is 19% fat? That's fattier than pizza! https://t.co/s7itnIaTTL @sainsburys @SainsburysNews @SoilAssocScot @SoilAssociation @rspcaassured @ScotlandMowi @MowiScotlandLtd @SSPOsays @FSScot @JulieHL @tavishscott pic.twitter.com/i94h1kvCMw

— Don Staniford (@TheGAAIA) March 3, 2021

Fatty farmed salmon is contaminated with cancer-causing contaminants such as DDT, dioxins & PCBs https://t.co/82gTC738IV
A scientific paper in 2006 reported that organic farmed salmon was the most contaminated with PCBshttps://t.co/C7URmaayyW #Boycott #Scottish #Salmon

— Don Staniford (@TheGAAIA) March 3, 2021

The story of 'organic' salmon is a fairy tale that could have been made into one of Rudyard Kipling's 'Just So' stories.

Far from being welfare-friendly, RSPCA Assured salmon is a factory farmed welfare nightmare.

Edie Bowles @Animallawyersuk said the dossier, compiled by Don Staniford, a critic of salmon farming, indicated “systemic and obvious” pain & suffering that could justify legal action against @scotgov @MairiGougeon @SSPOsays https://t.co/ZuzAis8gEr @SundayTimesScot @ciwf @scotgp pic.twitter.com/RPVIAL3KlS

— Don Staniford (@TheGAAIA) February 2, 2020

Watch video footage of a torture chamber called a Thermolicer in operation at Mowi's Loch Leven salmon farm:

Video Exclusive: drone footage of farmed fish being heated in a 'Thermolicer'. The Scottish salmon you see in supermarkets don't leap up waterfalls – they're crammed in lice-infested cages & then tortured in a cruel washing machine! https://t.co/tA2mlStYy4 @MowiScotlandLtd

— Don Staniford (@TheGAAIA) October 9, 2019

Last week (25 February 2021), Scottish Salmon Watch exposed the illegal killing of a juvenile harbour seal at Mowi's 'organic' salmon farm in Loch Ewe.

The Daily Mirror reported (1 March 2021):

Environment Journalist of the Year @NadaFarhoud in today's @DailyMirror: "This young harbour seal lies dead after being shot on a salmon farm that supplies British supermarkets" @ScotlandMowi @SSPCA_Mike @rspcaassured @sainsburys @SoilAssocScot @SSPOsays https://t.co/GochO5uIOt pic.twitter.com/WCjGNu1oX8

— Don Staniford (@TheGAAIA) March 1, 2021

In March 2020, Dutch TV slammed 'organic' salmon.

Dutch TV's 'Investigative Service' exposes the scam of 'organic' salmon https://t.co/8Hcc0iWaAU @PubliekeOmroep @KvW @ASC_aqua @DutchOrganicIT @KRAVmedia @SoilAssociation @Naturland_eV @organicUK @peterk69 @JoannaBlythman @LawWoodward @SoilAssocScot @Jonnynogaps @glenarmsalmon pic.twitter.com/U41FTbJ6A8

— Don Staniford (@TheGAAIA) March 30, 2020

Mowi's Loch Leven salmon farm reported the use of the toxic chemical Emamectin benzoate in September 2018.

And again in July 2018:

Peer-reviewed science has shown Emamectin benzoate is highly toxic and is lethal to shellfish.

Scottish Salmon Watch reported in July 2018 that Mowi's Loch Leven salmon farm had been rated "Poor" by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Mowi was renamed in January 2019 due to "negative consumer perception" in the name Marine Harvest).

Failing Fish Farms: Scotland's Worst Salmon Farms Named & Shamed

– 51 sites including Marine Harvest's Loch Leven salmon farm promoted by Prince Charles & Scotland's first salmon farm to be certified by the ASC (now expired)

Documents disclosed by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) via Freedom of Information (FOI) expose the poor practices of Scotland's worst salmon farms. In February, BBC News revealed that 51 fish farms in Scotland were failing to comply with environmental protection measures yet SEPA failed to name the companies responsible. In July, SEPA finally disclosed documents naming and shaming the salmon farming companies guilty of non-compliance during 2016 [1].

Scottish Salmon Watch can now reveal that Scottish salmon's worst operator is Norwegian-owned Scottish Sea Farms with 10 fish farms failing SEPA's compliance assessment in 2016 (with 9 farms assessed as "Poor" and one as "Very Poor"). Norwegian-owned Marine Harvest and Canadian-owned Cooke Aquaculture closely follow both with 9 failing fish farms and Jersey-registered and Swiss-owned the Scottish Salmon Company with 6 failing fish farms (all are members of the Scottish Salmon Producers Organisation).

One of Marine Harvest's 9 salmon farms rated as "Poor" was Loch Leven – the first salmon farm in Scotland to be certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council and one of only two ASC-certified farms in Scotland before its certification expired in February 2018. Marine Harvest's other ASC-certified site in Loch Linnhe has had its certification "cancelled" according to the ASC and expires in November – with another three salmon farms operated by Marine Harvest (Duich, Loch Alsh & Ardintoul) also having their ASC-certification "cancelled" [2]. Marine Harvest's farm in Loch Leven was visited by Prince Charles in 2016 who said it "has set the benchmark" and described the operations as "sustainable".

Photo: Prince Charles preaching about "sustainability" on his web-site using a photo of himself standing in front of Marine Harvest's of Loch Leven salmon farm (rated as "Poor" by SEPA)

The Press & Journal reported (27 July 2018):

The Daily Mail reported (31 July 2018):

Here's video footage shot by Scottish Salmon Watch at Mowi's Loch Leven salmon farm.

Data published by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency via 'Scotland's Aquaculture' reveals that Mowi's Loch Leven salmon farm has a chequered history of toxic chemical use (including Teflubenzuron – banned in 2015 after Mowi contaminated Loch Shell; and the shellfish-killers Azamethiphos, Deltamethrin, Cypermethrin and Emamectin benzoate), environmental breaches and mass mortalities.

Mowi has used the shellfish-killing toxic chemicals Azamethiphos, Emamectin benzoate, Deltamethrin, Cypermethrin & Teflubenzuron in Loch Leven for decades https://t.co/s7itnIaTTL @ScottishEPA @ScotlandMowi @SSPOsays
How can the salmon farm be truly 'organic'?@SoilAssocScot pic.twitter.com/8R1WBnJCdm

— Don Staniford (@TheGAAIA) March 3, 2021

The latest version of the Soil Association's 'organic' salmon standards (published in February 2021) permit the use of the lobster-killing chemical Deltamethrin but prohibits the use of the organosphosphate Azamethiphos (used by Mowi in Loch Leven in 2017) and the shellfish-killing Emamectin benzoate (used by Mowi in Loch Leven in 2018):

Here's video footage of mass mortalities at Mowi's nearby Gorsten salmon farm in Loch Linnhe:

Photos leaked by a whistleblower revealed shocking welfare abuse at Mowi's RSPCA Assured salmon farm at Carradale in 2018:

Here's what Mowi's @rspcaassured salmon looked like after 300,000 died in the Beast from the East in 2018 at their Carradale farm (the same site hit yesterday by Storm Ellen) https://t.co/hyztwncvhO Skinless Scottish salmon anyone? @MowiScotlandLtd @sainsburys @LidlGB @AldiUK pic.twitter.com/xjf3JM20jG

— Don Staniford (@TheGAAIA) August 21, 2020