Inspectors have no concerns over dead salmon at fish farm

Scottish salmon is the UK’s biggest food export, worth £578m in 2022.

But the number of fish dying on farms has been increasing, with a record 17 million salmon deaths reported in Scotland last year.

Warm sea temperatures have led to a significant increase in micro-jellyfish which cause harm to farmed salmon.

There are also long-standing concerns around parasitic sea lice and the use of chemical treatments in open waters.

In 2018, Holyrood’s environment committee concluded that Scotland’s marine ecosystem faced “irrecoverable damage” from an expansion in fish farming.

A report by the regulator Sepa, in the same year, found that almost one in five salmon farms in Scotland failed to meet statutory environmental standards.

Another report, by the Scottish parliament’s rural economy committee, made 65 recommendations for improvement but stopped short of backing a moratorium on new fish farms.

The current inquiry is examining to what extent those recommendations have been implemented.