Stop the expansion of the Scottish salmon industry
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What’s happening to fish on Scottish salmon farms?
Salmon are migratory animals that would normally travel hundreds of miles in the wild. Confined in unnatural, crowded cages, they’re left vulnerable to disease and injury. Footage from dozens of Scottish farms released by Animal Equality over the years has shown fish with deformed spines, ulcers and lesions.
Flesh-eating lice that can run rife in the crowded underwater cages literally eat the salmon alive, leaving open wounds across their heads and bodies, both covered in sensitive pain receptors.
Salmon can be attacked by seals, birds, jellyfish and other animals able to approach the sea cages, either killing them or leaving them with raw, gaping wounds that can become infected. This can also put wild animals, such as juvenile salmon or trout, at risk of contamination from the diseased salmon.
Salmon are solitary predators and may attack and cannibalise one another when forced into close confinement.
Scotland’s salmon industry sees millions of fish perish each year under its watch, due to disease, lice, violent weather and warming waters. Between 2023 and 2025, official figures recorded almost 36 million salmon deaths – and the true toll is likely far higher, since fish that are culled, die during transport, die within their first six weeks at sea, or are used as “cleanerfish” (smaller fish used to eat the lice off the farmed salmon) aren’t included in official figures.
Despite this scale of loss, regulators responsible for animal welfare have carried out few inspections and issued even fewer sanctions.
The solution
Scottish salmon farming is expanding while the systems meant to keep it in check are failing. Fish continue to die in vast numbers from disease, lice and neglect, while the industry’s use of toxic chemicals such as formaldehyde in hatcheries is rising and some regulators are even failing to carry out the inspections they’re legally required to do. In March 2026, the Scottish Parliament’s Rural Affairs and Islands Committee concluded a nine-month inquiry and, for the second year running, stated that the industry is not “future-proofed”.
Yet none of this has slowed the industry’s growth. Without a change of course, more farms means more animals trapped in the same failing system.
We’re calling on the Scottish Government to:
- Immediately halt further expansion of the salmon farming industry
- Ensure regulators carry out the regular, unannounced inspections they are legally required to conduct
- Introduce meaningful sanctions for breaches, instead of warnings with no follow-up
- Require full transparency of inspection reports and mortality data, so the industry can be held to account
Help us stop this cruel and unsustainable industry from growing any further.
Why your signature matters
Your voice creates change
Our campaigning has already forced this industry into the open. After our 2021 investigation into a Scottish Salmon Company slaughterhouse, the Animal and Plant Health Agency made inspections mandatory in Scottish fish slaughterhouses. We’ve secured cross-party backing from cross-party Members of the Scottish Parliaments, and coverage across The Observer, The Times, The Independent, The Scotsman, the Daily Record, and more. Our exposés – including footage of fish beaten to death and animals abandoned to starve in falsely “fallow” cages – have prompted assurance schemes and supermarkets to suspend sites as suppliers. Even the King revoked the Royal Warrant for the world’s largest salmon company, Mowi, after 35 years.
Public pressure is building. Activists, conservationists and local communities have protested outside the Scottish Parliament, and the Rural Affairs and Islands Committee has twice concluded that the industry isn’t fit for the future. Yet government ministers continue to insist regulation is “robust”, even as the industry breaches its own lice code more than a thousand times a year.
We need more signatures to keep the pressure on. Every name on this petition tells the Scottish Government that the public won’t accept an industry that lets millions of fish die in underwater cages and answers to almost no oversight. Add your voice and help us stop this industry from expanding any further.
Protect fish
Scientists confirm that fish feel pain and suffer. Protect these sensitive beings by choosing plant-based alternatives to animal food products.
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