from Sunday Herald, 01 July 2012
Scotland’s £1 billion salmon farming industry has been accused of hiding “damning” information about its environmental dangers from the public.
Salmon companies are refusing to send vital data to Scottish government scientists to avoid it being released under freedom of information law. And on the few occasions they have had to forward information, it has been deleted by government officials.
The information is about one of the biggest problems plaguing salmon farmers - infestations of sea lice. The tiny creatures multiple in salmon cages and can spread to wild fish, eating them alive.
Salmon farmers apply toxic pesticides to try and kill them off, though there are signs that the lice are becoming increasingly resistant. The pesticides have contaminated sea lochs along the north west coast.
The law requires salmon farmers to regularly monitor the number of sea lice in their cages. They have previously sent the results to Scottish government marine scientists in Aberdeen to help with research and treatment.
But emails released in response to freedom of information requests show that salmon farming companies are no longer supplying the data because it could be accessed by their critics using freedom of information legislation.
In one email, Norwegian-owned Marine Harvest said that releasing the information “could result in misrepresentation of the facts which would of course be damaging to our commercial interests as a company.”
The companies pointed out that they complied with the law by allowing government inspectors to see sea lice counts when they visited individual farms. When computers were down, the information had to be sent in afterwards, they said.
But when the information has been transmitted, it has been scrubbed. In response to a freedom of information request last year, the government’s Marine Scotland Science said it had deleted sea lice data from three Marine Harvest farms “as we had no further use for it”.
This was criticised by the Salmon and Trout Association, an angling group that fears that lice from fish farms harm wild fish. “It seems odd to go about deliberately destroying valuable and possibly contentious biological data, unless you were worried about having to disclose it under freedom of information,” said the solicitor acting for the association, Guy Linley-Adams.
He demanded full publication of the industry’s sea lice data as “a litmus test of the Scottish government’s commitment to limiting the environmental damage caused by the fish farming industry.” The Scottish Environment Protection Agency told the Sunday Herald that the data “needs to be available on a site-by-site basis in as near to real time as possible, in order to facilitate effective treatment.”
Don Staniford, a veteran campaigner from the Global Alliance Against Industrial Aquaculture, pointed out that detailed sea lice data was published in other major fish farming countries like Norway and Canada. The limited summary information made available by the Scottish industry showed that levels of lice infestation in some areas could rise to six times guideline limits.
“It’s painfully clear that the sea lice data is so damning that it will be a case of publish and perish for Marine Harvest and other salmon farming companies operating in Scotland,” said Staniford.
Marine Harvest stressed that it met legal requirements on reporting lice numbers. “We would be unhappy about the general release of sensitive company information,” said the company’s business support manager in Fort William, Steve Bracken.
The Scottish Salmon Producers’ Organisation, which represents fish farming companies, attacked “single-issue pressure groups” for distorting reality. “It is extremely disappointing to see them continue with their on-going campaign of misinformation,” said the organisation’s chief executive, Scott Landsburgh.
"Farmers monitor sea lice levels on a weekly basis, in accordance with legislative requirements, and these records are inspected by the Scottish government's fish health inspectorate during the hundreds of farm visits that are made each year.”
The Scottish government accepted that it did not possess detailed sea lice data, but claimed companies had not withheld it because of freedom of information law. The data was not going to be included on a new aquaculture website due to be launched next month.
“Our consultation on possible aquaculture and fisheries legislation set out issues related to sea lice data collection and publication,” said a government spokesman. “All of the consultation responses are currently being considered with a view to introducing the bill in the autumn.”
It is an industry standard in world wide communications strategy to refuse to send information for lice, disease, pollution, seal kills and so on.
When government requires it, they have no choice but to send it in.
In BC the Cohen Commission dismissed the fish farm refusal to bring forth disease date. This lead to a watershed understanding that governments, industry, academics and testing systems are pretty much operating together against the views of the public who want fish farms on land rather than in the ocean.
Pressure the Scottish government to require and post fish farm data.
Posted by: DC Reid | 03 July 2012 at 07:28 PM