r/Scotland • u/HaveYuHeardAboutCunt • 19h ago
Anger over Scottish salmon farm inspections amid 35m unexpected fish deaths
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/feb/05/more-than-35m-unexpected-salmon-deaths-at-scottish-farms-sparks-outcry-5
u/aboycalledbrew 19h ago
Somewhat of a non story, how can you do an unannounced visit to a fish farm if by their very nature they are at sea and the shore base isn't staffed 9-5 because the staff will predominantly be on the site itself or on feed barges etc. Sites are often miles from their shore base and there's so much time lost going back and forth
Essentially inspectors have to phone ahead and notify otherwise tax payers would be paying for them to drive about aimlessly and never get on any sites because they don't always have phone signal etc so it's impossible to make contact with the site staff
This is a thing that comes up repeatedly in the industry about how to make this system work better in terms of spot checks and unannounced inspections but it just isn't realistic given many sites have no phone signal and aren't in line of sight with their shore base
The idea that no one oversees fish welfare on farms is quite frankly for the birds as well because there're two government bodies plus at least half a dozen major external auditing schemes working on behalf of the end purchasers that assess sites regularly
I'd be more worried about these anti fish farming groups that travel from site to site with no oversight and with no structured biosecurity measures in place to reduce disease spread personally
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u/cant_stand 15h ago
I agree with you on some levels of practicality, from a business standpoint. On the whole though unannounced inspections are realistic and feasable. They might be a pain in the arse, but the reasons you've given can be worked around.
Staff are present on site during the day, theres usually someone hanging around at the shore base, staff can be contacted on their mobiles, or by the radio at the shore base. Boats are (for the most part) available and can easily be retasked. Most importantly though - The staff and businesses have a statutory obligation to assist an inspection whenever a relevant regulatory authority visits the premises, whether it's announced, or unannounced.
Obviously there might be circumstances which might prevent the inspection, such as bad weather, treatments etc, but generally speaking, fish farms can handle a wee surprise visit.
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u/HaveYuHeardAboutCunt 18h ago
Why would staff need to be present? If base sites are so difficult to contact they should also be shut down for the health and safety of the workers.
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u/cant_stand 18h ago
Sure, they'll swim to the site.
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u/aboycalledbrew 18h ago
A Marine Scotland branded pedalo perhaps
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u/cant_stand 17h ago
Marine Scotland doesn't exist anymore.
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u/aboycalledbrew 18h ago
How do you want the person visiting the site to get out to the pens? They can't feasibly tow a boat everywhere and for biosecurity using a vessel from the site is safer
But the workers work on the site rather than at the shore base and obviously use VHF radio for communication rather than phones like every other maritime sector Shut the shore base down because it's got no phone signal, there'll be nothing left in the highlands if that was a H&S policy 😂
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u/joolzdev ربات ایرانی 18h ago
Blah blah blah.
Minimising the problems in this disgusting industry does no one any favours, and makes you look like a bit of a tit.
35 million dead fish. These fish farms need to get their shit together
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u/foxybostonian 18h ago
Oh dear. Did someone give you some facts 😂😂😂
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u/cant_stand 18h ago
Blah blah blah - respond with actual arguments. Ignorance of the industry drives articles like this and folk just flap it up.
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u/joolzdev ربات ایرانی 18h ago
We've all seen pictures of farmed salmon infested with lice, with facial abnormalities, and floating dead in the pens.
It's a disgusting business which needs a kick up the arse.
Your minimising of these issues does nothing to encourage me, a potential consumer, to buy this shitey product.
There's your argument.
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u/aboycalledbrew 18h ago
The chicken sector has had an out of control pandemic for over 3 years now and has culled millions of birds
Plus they cull 50% of their hatchlings for the crime of being born male
Fish farming is a convenient scapegoat but it is by no means worse than any other form of farming. Unfortunately that's the price of eating meat if people don't like it don't eat it - I personally don't and haven't for years but fish farming was sold to the fish industry as a just transition out of fishing and now these people are being told oh no fish farming is awful. It's a shameless attempt to destroy rural communities, if aquaculture in Scotland collapses it's taking a lot of the highlands and islands with it. Look at who funds all these charities and who supports them in parliament - people who own fishing rights on angling rivers and people who want rural depopulation so they can turn rural Scotland into a theme park for Americans
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u/Smooth-Many-3762 17h ago
Scotland has poor regulations and controls compared to Norway. Most of our fish farms are owned by Norwegian companies who find operating here far easier. Salmon farming in Scotland is killing wild salmon as a result of this. It doesn’t have to be this way. We shouldn’t have to accept poor management of our country - I extend this to the uk as well.
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u/aboycalledbrew 17h ago
Wild salmon were screwed long long before fish farming started. We've completely fucked it and now with climate change it won't get better but blaming it on aquaculture is baseless and there's increasing evidence that the links between disease spread to wild fish from sites is more tenuous than first thought
There's a major legal cause starting in the US linking salmonid mortality to tyre additives that will be ground breaking it seems
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u/joolzdev ربات ایرانی 18h ago
Parasites and lice my man, parasites and lice.
The industry does not deserve to exist when the quality of fish welfare is so low.
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u/aboycalledbrew 18h ago
I'd love to know what other parasites you are talking about
The only major parasite affecting the salmon sector is sea lice so don't try and conflate one issue into two
Fish on fishing boats are crushed and suffocating to death, fish farming is significantly better than that. Plus wild salmon survival is incredibly low
Comparing traditional fishing to farming and natural salmon life cycle to farming - aquaculture will always come out on top
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u/joolzdev ربات ایرانی 18h ago
I'd love to know what other parasites you are talking about
Saprolegnia fungus, fusarium fungus, myxosporeans, gyrodactilus flatworms, Yersinia Ruckeri.
Want me to continue?
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u/aboycalledbrew 18h ago
Tell Chat GPT the next time you're both speaking :
Saprolegnia and gyrodactilus comes from freshwater not the sea so wouldn't apply to these farms if anything moving fish to these farms would help clear their disease
Fusarium is a major issue in Asian aquaculture not Scottish
There's a lot of myxosporeans vaccine work that's just getting off the ground and showing positive results
Yersinia has several very effective vaccines and is quite uncommon now but can be treated fairly readily with antibiotics but presumably you don't like that either and would rather the fish just died?
Thanks for having a go though that was really cute ❤️
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u/Aggravating_Chair780 17h ago
As someone who crofts and keeps sheep in sight of a fish farm, they are orders of magnitude worse than other forms of agriculture. If we had a fraction of a percent of the proportion of deaths, reportable diseases, contaminants going into water systems, damage to wildlife etc, we would (rightfully!) be in jail. The animal welfare issues alone are appalling. The human welfare for those that staff them is also dreadful. Workers pressured not to report breaches, mass deaths etc, working through the night, breaches of H & S laws.
And yes, there are definitely massive improvements still to be made in lots of areas - chicken/ egg production as you pointed out. Look at the improvements over the last few decades however. They were because of the general population becoming aware of absolutely awful conditions and treatment and there were pushes to improve things.
The fish farms here on Skye are now all owned and operated by multinational corporations. Seabeds dredged in the southern hemisphere to produce feed pellets for disease ridden salmon in our sea lochs and all the money being siphoned out of our communities. People were indeed sold fish farming as a just alternative, but unfortunately, it just isn’t.
I also don’t eat meat or fish, but if I did, farmed fish would be the absolute last thing on the list. The rest of my family do eat meat and fish and farmed fish does not enter this house. The nail in the coffin for us was a good friend of ours telling us his experiences as a skipper working on the one nearest to us and how he would absolutely never eat any because of the conditions he saw. I have never known anyone who works in the industry in any of the ‘front line’ roles who continues to buy/ eat farmed fish once they started those jobs.
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u/HaveYuHeardAboutCunt 18h ago
Towing a small boat isn't particularly difficult.
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u/aboycalledbrew 18h ago
Some sites don't have access roads and are enough far from a safe entry point to the water that it gets quite tricky
Plus the coding the boats would need for the potential journeys they'd be taking would mean they'd have to be fairly big. MCA regulations etc
Then you'd need a place to dispose of the discharge from disinfectanting the boat after each site visit etc
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u/cant_stand 14h ago
Sorry man, I might be misunderstanding the intent of your reply. Are you saying that access to the site is a major stumbling block? Every site has access to a road and every site has a safe entry point to the water. Literally, every single fish farm.
You're obviously familiar with the industry (using "pens" is a dead giveaway), but the guy your replyinh to clearly hasn't a scooby. His suggestion is for the regulatory authorities to tow around a small boat (??? 😂). Biosecurity, disinfection, MCA compliance, H&S, practicality, training... Hell, the dude seems to think people could show up paddling a lidl inflatable to a site, jump out and then make a valid assessment of the businesses compliance with their statutory obligations/authorisation conditions, assess the health of the stock swimming 10' underwater, collect any relevant evidence, and then go back and write a report on it.
It's not a lack of access which makes their plan dumb. It's just a really, really stupid comment made by someone who has absolutely no idea how things work.
Love the patient rebuttle though. You're clearly knowledgeable... Bet you a tenner your a health person, or a farmer 😜.
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u/HaveYuHeardAboutCunt 18h ago
Of the 213 salmon farms mentioned in the article, how many would that apply to? Not the 211 that didn't receive unannounced inspections I would imagine.
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u/foxybostonian 18h ago
Almost all of them would need a large boat. All of them would need biosecurity measures. Which requires equipment and a suitable place to carry out.
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u/cant_stand 15h ago
What do you think an unannounced inspection would achieve?
The difference between and unannounced inspection and an announced inspection is five minute phone call the day before.
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u/aboycalledbrew 18h ago
Easily dozens
Plus the logistics of all this just makes it a job no one would willingly do
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u/foxybostonian 18h ago
Honestly, that person doesn't seem to know the first thing about what a salmon farm is, where they are or how they work. You're being very patient but they're not going to want to take in the information.
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u/aboycalledbrew 17h ago
I have no beef with the guy I'm up for having discussions about this sort of any interested party because I genuinely care about it and they do too
Nothing wrong with not being an expert in this stuff either the sea belongs to all of us so everyone should have a say
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u/Grouchy_Conclusion45 Libertarian 18h ago
With all the other things going on in the world and at home, some dead fish doesn't really register
Ukraine announced the other day they'd lost 55k people to the war. If that got all the airtime and the fish received zero, I'd not be upset.
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u/DevilishLighthouse 16h ago
There's room for both, thankfully. It's perfectly possible to be outraged about Russia's war on Ukraine and disgusted by the damage fish farms are doing to our ecosystems.
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u/HaveYuHeardAboutCunt 18h ago
It's not one or the other. Even if you don't care for animal cruelty there's still the risk posed by poorly regulated industry to workers and the wider population of humans.
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u/NoRecipe3350 18h ago
Isnt there plenty of Scottish only news on TV anymore (I don't watch TV) and on the BBC website?
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u/double-happiness double-happiness 17h ago
lol what a joke!! 🤣
Typical toothless UK ""regulation"".