Seòmar agus comataidhean

I will continue on the theme of mortalities, and pick up on some questions that Emma Roddick raised.

Cabinet secretary, can you explain why the Scottish Government and the marine directorate are not identifying farms with repeated high mortalities and requiring them to downsize—we had an extensive discussion about the moving of farms, but I am interested in the downsizing of them—or to close in order to prevent further unnecessary suffering?

In addition, why are the Government and the directorate not requiring fish farming companies to reduce mortalities in each cycle? We are talking about a mortality rate of 25 per cent. Why are companies not being required to reduce mortalities in each cycle in order to achieve a humane level, probably within about five years? Why is the Government not taking those measures?

I am interested in the downsizing or closing of farms, and the reduction of mortality rates to a humane level.

Having a good relationship with communities and presenting that information in an accessible way would be a part of having social licence, would it not?

But what was the advice?

I will follow on from Tim Eagle’s questions. We know that

“Fish welfare is the responsibility of the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) but APHA investigates only a small sub-selection of reports of poor animal welfare on fish farms, if FHI (and occasionally third parties) notify it of high mortality events. It does not always inspect even the farms with the highest mortality.”

It is quite concerning that we have a body—APHA—that is required to investigate, but is not doing many investigations.

Could you come back to the committee with a measurement that shows what APHA is investigating now and, with more resource, what it will do in the future?

Thank you very much.

I come back to the other part of my question, because I feel like that was skipped over. It was about downsizing or closing farms in the meantime, while we try to get to grips with the unnecessary suffering that is happening in those fish farms and fish cages.

Okay. I will leave it there, but I do not necessarily take that as the case. I do not have the information in front of me, but I am aware of farms that have been restocking and have had problems. I will pull that out and ensure that the committee is aware of it.

I will follow on from that. Cabinet secretary, I heard you say that the Government and marine directorate have more work to do on the data and reporting. A number of issues have come up on that. At the moment, it remains impossible for the public to check on fish farm compliance around bath chemical discharge licences, and SEPA has produced no compliance assessment scheme reports for companies since 2019.

Another issue is that data is given in different ways. SEPA and the FHI use different metrics, so data is not always comparable. Surely, it would be a fairly easy and reasonable step to address that discrepancy. Can we get a commitment from the Scottish Government and the marine directorate to move forward with making all that data not only publicly accessible but coherent, so that it is easy for the public to see whether a particular farm is compliant?

I take those points. I want to emphasise, again, the urgency and the concern about the sea bed.

The Scottish Association for Marine Science report for the 2018 parliamentary inquiry into salmon farming said that

“Scotland’s target of producing 200,000 tonnes salmon in 2020 will likely emit organic waste equivalent to that of about half of Scotland’s human population”,

which at that time was 5.3 million people. That is an incredible amount of waste. The fact that there are 72 sea bed survey results that have not been analysed makes me really concerned that we do not really have a clear picture or a robust sense of what is going on in our sea bed.