Update: Scottish Parliament inquiry into the environmental impacts of salmon farming

Watch today's inquiry live on Scottish Parliament TV from 9.30am

Oral evidence is given at today's Scottish Parliament's inquiry into the environmental impacts of salmon farming by the salmon farming industry (represented by the Scottish Salmon Polluters Organisation and their chums at the Scottish Environment Pollution Agency) as well as Friends of the Sound of Jura, Scottish Environment LINK, Marine Scotland and Highland Council (read the agenda online here).

The public still has a chance to submit written evidence – the deadline is 8 February

Only some of the evidence submitted already has been posted online here

The written evidence from Friends of Jura includes:

The written evidence – which is limited to 4 pages – concludes:

John Aitchison, who is testifying later this morning sitting alongside David Sandison of the Scottish Salmon Polluters Organisation, is used to being behind not in front of the camera.

As a double Emmy and BAFTA award winner John appears to be rather good at his work and was successful in fighting off a fish farm application at Dounie Bay in the Sound of Jura.

John's experience in fighting off the advances of a ravenous polar bear will mean that sitting next to a lobbyist for the lice-infested and disease-ridden salmon farming industry should hold no fears.

Here's photos of a polar bear bloodied from killing a seal; one of the dozens of seals killed by Marine Harvest (a member of the SSPO); and David Sandison of the Scottish Salmon Polluters Organisation promoting delicious nay nutritious, sustainable and responsible Scottish salmon:

David Sandison of the Scottish Salmon Polluters Organisation told Fish Update (5 February 2018) that today's meeting was "a great opportunity for us to engage better, to engage at a political level but also to engage with regulators, who are actually keen to hear from us".

Engaging with regulators in public will make a nice change for the Scottish Salmon Polluters Organisation who are used to meeting the Scottish Environment Protection Agency in private – over a smoked salmon breakfast in a hotel or over an evening meal in Perth.

Photo: SSPO's Chief Executive Scott Landburgh stroking his lapdog called SEPA

Fish Farming Expert reported (5 February):

Perhaps the Scottish Parliament could put an end to the myth that Scottish salmon farmers only kill seals as a "last resort"?

Fish Update also reported (5 February):

Other written evidence posted online by the Scottish Parliament is from Save Seil Sound – including:

Scottish salmon farmers have been getting away with murder (in relation to lice-infestation of wild salmon and sea trout and seals) for years.

MSPs will hopefully remember that this inquiry stems from a petition filed by Guy Linley-Adams of Salmon & Trout Conservation who have fought tirelessly to publish site specific sea lice data – including the 62 salmon farms breaching lice limits (51 of whom are members of the Scottish Salmon Polluters Organisation):

Perhaps David Sandison will explain to today's committee why lice infestation rates are so high across Scotland?

Scott Landsburgh, the outgoing Chief Executive of the Scottish Salmon Producers Organisation, wrote in Fish Farmer magazine (January 2018):

Here's two of "the voices of the militant part of the wild fish lobby" – Andrew Graham-Stewart and Guy Linley-Adams of Salmon & Trout Conservation – who are heavily armed with their double-barrel surnames, fishing rods and the power of Freedom of Information.

Read more via Salmon & Trout Conservation's dangerous arsenal of damning sea lice data:

"FOI Number Five – getting you the information they don’t want you to see!"

"Scottish salmon farming’s ‘liciest’ farms named and shamed"

"Scotland’s worst sea lice offenders: Full Farm List"

Shamefully, the Scottish Parliament has deemed inserting web-links to scientific reports and damning data obtained via FOI to be a breach of their Kaftaesque rules (as ordered by "Policy on treatment of written evidence by subject and mandatory committees").

Hence GAAIA's 4-page written submission is not available via the Scottish Parliament:

From: Don Staniford [mailto:salmonfarmingkills@gmail.com]
Sent: 05 February 2018 00:51
To: 'Ruskell M (Mark), MSP'; 'Forbes K (Kate), MSP'; 'Beamish C (Claudia), MSP'; 'Dey G (Graeme), MSP'; 'Scott J (John), MSP'; 'Cameron D (Donald), MSP'; 'Carson F (Finlay), MSP'; 'Lyle R (Richard), MSP'; 'MacDonald A (Angus), MSP'; 'MSP'; 'msp@stewartstevenson.net'; 'Golden M (Maurice), MSP'; 'McAlpine J (Joan), MSP'; 'Smyth C (Colin), MSP'; 'Wightman A (Andy), MSP'
Cc: 'Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee'; 'EnvironmentClimateChangeandLandReformcommittee'
Subject: New FOI data on mortalities & diseases on Scottish salmon farms during 2017

Members of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform (ECCLR) Committee,

Please find enclosed new FOI data sourced from SEPA and the Scottish Government on mortalities and diseases on Scottish salmon farms during 2017.

Download Excel spreadsheets via:

Marine Harvest mort numbers & weights (Jan to Sept 2017) (FOI data from SEPA)

Marine Harvest mort event reports in 2017 (FOI data from the Scottish Government)

Scottish Salmon Company mort event reports in 2017 (FOI data from the Scottish Government)

Scottish Sea Farms mort event reports in 2017 (FOI data from the Scottish Government)

Data on Mortalities & Diseases at Scottish Salmon Farms

Photo Gallery: Dead Salmon from Scotland's Disease-Ridden Salmon Farms

I've also copied in Dr. Adam Hughes from SAMS who testified at the Scottish Parliament's inquiry into the environmental impacts of salmon farming last week (30 January) that "welfare standards are very high at the moment" and "Scotland probably has a lower mortality rate" (than other countries such as Chile and Norway).

As a friendly observation, I fully appreciate the lack of space and time to cram in all the evidence required for a proper inquiry into the environmental impacts of salmon farming. However, restricting written submissions to 4 pages of A4 and refusing to accept cited sources and web-links smacks of censorship (see correspondence with the Senior Assistant Clerk below).

The Scottish Parliament's inquiry into the environmental impacts of salmon farming has caught itself in a conundrum or Catch 22 situation if you pardon the pun. The Scottish Parliament's 'Policy on treatment of written evidence by subject and mandatory committees' is well-intentioned. Yet coupled with the policy of the SAMS authors of 'Review of the Environmental Impacts of Salmon Farming in Scotland' which ignores data gathered via FOI and news reports (even if in the public domain) there is a huge amount of damning data slipping through the net.

GAAIA's written submission to the Scottish Parliament's inquiry provides more details on this but it has been ruled ineligible. As the Senior Assistant Clerk stated on Friday: "Our legal advice is that by linking to external sites, if they were to include any potentially defamatory material the Parliament could potentially still be held liable for their content….. Looking at your submission, while there is nothing in the text itself that gives any concern in relation to the policy, there are a substantial number of links to external sites".

If you take the time to view the web-links cited in GAAIA's written submission you will see that most of the web-links are to peer-reviewed scientific papers, published reports, published news reports and other articles sourced from FOI data.

The conundrum/Catch 22 is the fact that the Scottish Government, SEPA or the SSPO do not publish site specific data on mortalities and diseases (including sea lice). Shamefully, the Scottish Government's Scotland's Aquaculture database fails to include such data (following lobbying from the salmon farming industry). Both GAAIA and Salmon & Trout Conservation have fought for over a decade to access data on sea lice, disease, mortalities, escapes and seal killings.

Moreover, data published via newspapers and the media goes unreported and presumably is deemed 'unreliable' by SAMS (even if it is sourced from FOI data supplied by the salmon farming companies themselves and made available by SEPA, the Scottish Government etc). Instead of publishing damning data the SSPO's policy has to demonise those groups who dare to publish data sourced from the salmon farming industry's own data returns – for example, labelling the S&TC as "militants" in the January 2018 issue of Fish Farmer magazine.

If the Committee were allowed by the Scottish Parliament's 'Policy on treatment of written evidence by subject and mandatory committees' to open web-links they would read the Scottish Information Commissioner Decision 182/2006 Mr Bruce Sandison and the Fisheries Research Services – Request for information relating to the escape of salmon from an Orkney fish farm. This landmark decision paved the way for further information disclosures and opened the floodgates to new information which has been reported by GAAIA, S&TC and various news outlets including The Sunday Times, BBC Scotland, The Sunday Herald, The Daily Mail and The Ferret.

If SAMS rules out such data – sourced from the salmon farming companies themselves submitting data to SEPA, the Scottish Government and SNH – and the Scottish Parliament rules out accessing FOI data because downloading web-links may infringe upon the Scottish Parliament's 'Policy on treatment of written evidence by subject and mandatory committees' then MSPs are lost in a Kafkaesque nightmare where the door to damning data is closed.

For those MSPs brave enough to open the door to 'Scottish Salmon Farming 101' here's some web-links which contravene the Scottish Parliament's draconian rules:

"Scottish Salmon Farming 101"

"How the Scottish Government ‘nuanced’ away fish farm pesticide ban"

"FOI Number Five – getting you the information they don’t want you to see!"

"Scottish salmon farming’s ‘liciest’ farms named and shamed"

"Scotland’s worst sea lice offenders: Full Farm List"

"Slicegate: Anatomy & Chronology of an Environmental Lobotomy"

"Revealed: Scandal of 45 Scottish lochs trashed by pollution"

"Campaigners welcome ruling on seal shooting disclosure"

"Victory: Disclosure of Seal-Killing Salmon Farm Data Ordered by 21 August"

"FishyLeaks: Scottish Salmon Infested With Parasites – Sea Lice Data Reveals 1001 Reasons to Boycott Farmed Salmon"

"FishyLeaks: Scottish Salmon's Toxic Toilets Named & Shamed"

"Scottish Farmed Salmon Exposed"

"Gaining Transparency: using the FOIA process to track down data on the impacts of fish farming"

GAAIA has also collated various FOI documents online via 'Freedom for Fish'. This includes data on the prevalence of ADD use on Scottish salmon farms and scientific research conducted by SAMS itself which remains unpublished and hence was ignored by the SAMS authors of 'Review of the Environmental Impacts of Salmon Farming in Scotland' (this issue was raised by the Convener Graeme Dey in the discussions last week):

"RSPCA/Freedom Food & Seal Killing FOI Backgrounder (May 2017)"

Sunday Herald: "Health of whales, dolphins and porpoises put at risk by underwater alarms"

"Cetaceans Sound Alarm On Salmon Farms – new research sparks EC complaint & call to ban Acoustic Deterrent Devices"

"Large-scale underwater noise pollution from Acoustic Deterrent Devices (ADDs) on the west coast of Scotland"

You may also wish to file FOIs, PQs as well as asking SEPA, the SSPO and Scottish Government to disclose up-to-date data on mortalities and diseases on Scottish salmon farms. As reference here's a letter from the SSPO asking SEPA NOT to publish data on mortalities arguing that publication "could be used to the commercial detriment or competitive market disadvantage of the companies submitting the data":

Finally, the Committee may wish to refer to business information which is in the public domain detailing job losses at Marine Harvest because "fewer salmon are expected to be harvested this year". It would be interesting to ask the SSPO (whose member producers include Marine Harvest, Scottish Sea Farms and The Scottish Salmon Company) how big are the industry's losses and what diseases are killing Scottish salmon.

The FOI data published today reveals that Marine Harvest, Scottish Sea Farms and the Scottish Salmon Company reported the following reasons for mortalities during 2017:

Salmon Gill poxvirus, Paranucleospora theridion, gill pathology, complex gill issues, Vibrio anguillarum, Proliferative Gill Disease, Amoebic Gill Disease, Pancreas Disease, fungus, cardiomyopathy syndrome, Haemorrhagic smolt syndrome, HSMI, Enteric redmouth disease, anaemia and deaths due to the Hydrolicer, Thermolicer, hydrogen peroxide treatment, Salmosan treatment, freshwater post treatment, physical damage, plankton, water quality issues, algal bloom, seal predation and jellyfish.

Scottish Salmon Company mort events in 2017 – The Excel spreadsheet details 1,512,077 mortalities in 131 separate reports/incidents during 2017 – including:

85 reported as Gill Diseases (Gill Pathology, AGD, PGD, gill issues and complex gill issues)

41 reported as Treatment

14 reported as CMS

11 reported as PD (Pancreas Disease)

The top ten mortality events reported by the Scottish Salmon Company in 2017 (up to November) were:

Marine Harvest mort events in 2017 – The Excel spreadsheet details 572,488 mortalities in 56 separate reports/incidents during 2017 – including:

24 reported as CMS

22 reported as Gill Diseases (Gill Pathology, AGD, PGD, gill issues and complex gill issues)

18 reported as Treatment

13 reported as Anaemia

4 reported as PD

The top twenty mortality events reported by Marine Harvest in 2017 (up to November) were:

Scottish Sea Farms mort events in 2017 – The Excel spreadsheet details 356,082 mortalities in 46 separate reports/incidents during 2017 – including:

27 reported as Gill Diseases (Gill Pathology, AGD, PGD, gill issues and complex gill issues)

18 reported as Anaemia

14 reported as Treatment

7 reported as CMS

The top ten mortality events reported by Scottish Sea Farms in 2017 (up to November) were:

Suffice to say that in view of such disease and mortality problems the salmon farming industry's 'road map' proposing a doubling of aquaculture by 2030 is the road to hell.

Best fishes,

Don

Don Staniford

Director, Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture (GAAIA): http://www.salmonfarmingkills.com

Read my blog via http://donstaniford.typepad.com/my-blog

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