Almost all of the "Scottish" salmon sold in UK supermarkets and restaurant chains is factory-farmed. The farms sit in deep-sea lochs, where they pack tens of thousands of fish into a single space, confining a migratory animal into an underwater cage.
In the often dirty, crowded pens, sea lice thrive and eat the fish alive, stripping away chunks of flesh and leaving them with damaged and missing eyes. To fight lice and fungal infections, the industry floods the water with toxic chemicals, including hydrogen peroxide and formaldehyde, the chemical used to embalm the dead, and a known human carcinogen. Over 48,000kg of formaldehyde was discharged into Scottish lochs in a single year, and by 2017 at least 45 lochs had been polluted with fish farm chemicals.
Despite the enormous amount of pollution, the very obvious animal suffering, and the fact that these farms are almost all foreign-owned, taxpayers dished out millions in subsidies to prop up this industry, which is run for private profit.
Don’t let the government get away with inaction while millions of salmon suffer and lochs are polluted. Ask the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Action and Rural Affairs, and the Minister for Agriculture, Marine and the Islands, to stop using public money to fund industrial salmon farming.
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