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The Truth About Scottish Salmon Farming

Imogen Allen
05/09/2023 Updated: 16/04/2024
While consumers see salmon bodies neatly packaged in supermarkets, the hidden journey of these fish remains largely untold. Animal Equality’s team is dedicated to unveiling this concealed reality.

While consumers see salmon bodies neatly packaged in supermarkets, the hidden journey of these fish remains largely untold. Animal Equality’s team is dedicated to unveiling this concealed reality.

In 2021, our investigation into a Scottish Salmon Company slaughterhouse exposed grave animal welfare concerns. We discovered many fish were killed while fully conscious. At the time of release, this company was a known supplier of salmon to Waitrose and Co-op.

By 2023, using drones, we captured further disturbing scenes of salmon and trout being mishandled, improperly stunned, and left to suffocate in offshore Scottish farms.

We also worked with The Observer and $calmon $cotland to draw attention to record salmon deaths on farms. Together, we revealed that over 16.5 million farmed salmon died in sea pens in Scotland last year. This figure is almost double the number recorded in 2021 and triple that of 2020.

Despite our findings reaching mainstream media outlets, as well as Government officials and Parliamentarians, the industry has tried to dismiss or downplay them.

Fish feel pain and they experience emotions.

No animal should endure the conditions we’ve witnessed.

If we’re going to persuade the Government to take these actions, we need as many people as possible showing their support for our call.

Will you help fish today by signing our petition?

In the UK, up to 77 million fish are farmed and killed each year – that’s approximately 210,959 per day.

There is an abundance of scientific evidence highlighting that farmed fish and other aquatic animals have an ability to feel joy and to feel pain.

Despite this knowledge, fish are currently facing extreme suffering due to a lack of specific, meaningful protections in law.

Combined with a complete lack of regulatory oversight of farmed fish abattoirs, the aquaculture industry is being left to monitor itself in the eyes of the law.

The UK Government has a duty of care to farmed fish used by the UK aquaculture industry. It is critical to ensure that laws are put in place, compliance is maintained, and those failing to meet legal standards are penalised accordingly.

Therefore, we, the undersigned, are calling on the UK Government to implement the following as a matter of priority:

  • Fish must receive species-specific, meaningful provisions in the Welfare At Time Of Killing (WATOK) regulations, which currently only offers these detailed protections for farmed land animals
  • Consistency measures must be put in place, where a certain rate of failure in any welfare metric triggers machinery halt, requires summoning of a vet, and provokes an official inspection of the facility by a government official / neutral third-party
  • Fish slaughterhouses across Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland must be subject to regular announced and unannounced inspections to take place annually
  • Fish must receive ante-mortem welfare inspections from the relevant bodies in each country of the UK
  • CCTV must be a mandatory requirement in fish slaughterhouses, with monitoring from public bodies

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