Scottish ministers are being challenged to “intervene urgently” to ensure that “legally robust” regulations are brought in to control parasite numbers in Scotland’s salmon farming industry.
Campaigners made the plea on the back of a challenge by salmon farmers against licence changes requiring regular monitoring and reporting of sea lice numbers – and could in some cases set a maximum permitted number of the parasites.
These notices of variation have now been quashed by the Scottish Government’s planning and environmental appeals division – a decision that has been welcomed by the industry body Salmon Scotland However Nick Underdown, Scotland director of WildFish, claimed the situation left a “continued, regulatory shambles” as he hit out at the salmon farming industry, accusing the sector of seeking to “obstruct effective protective measures for wild salmon”.
The conditions in salmon farms can create what has been described as a “hotbed” for sea lice, but the parasites can then escape the pens, infecting wild salmon.
With the independent Salmon Interactions Working Group having told ministers back in 2020 that a “robust and durable framework” was needed to minimise the impact of the fish farming sector on wild salmon, Mr Underdown said that “Scotland still has no effective regulatory controls in place to limit this threat”.
He said: “This is an indefensible failure of government....
