Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you very much. I will bring in Mark Griffin, who joins us online.

We appreciate you doing that, so that we do not have to go through a lot of processes that might not be used. I am aware that there are lots of things in legislation that end up not being used.

That brings us to the end of our questions. Many thanks for your contributions. It has been useful to get some of the detail.

We previously agreed to take the next item in private, but given the time, I am now going to close the meeting.

It has been an interesting morning.

I am moving on to the theme of the Rural Economy and Connectivity Committee’s recommendations. In 2018, the REC Committee inquiry recommended that

“urgent and meaningful action needs to be taken to address regulatory deficiencies as well as fish health and environmental issues before the industry can expand.”

As I understand it, since 2018, more than 50,000 tons of biomass has been given planning permission, but data from the fish health inspectorate and SEPA shows that in 2022 and 2023, four times more fish died in salmon farms than in 2018. Numbers from the fish health inspectorate show that in 2018, there were 3,782,475 seawater and freshwater deaths, and in 2023, there were 17.4 million seawater and freshwater deaths—the figures are as provided in the Scottish Parliament information centre’s briefings. Those numbers are huge underestimates, as they do not include any fish that died in the first six weeks at sea, or any deaths under the FHI’s weekly reporting threshold. As we have been discussing, that is 1 per cent of the total fish in a sea farm per week.

Given the REC Committee’s recommendation that regulatory deficiencies, fish health and environmental issues needed to be addressed before the industry could expand, why do you think that the industry should be allowed to expand? Why is the industry expanding when the recommendation was that things needed to be taken care of that clearly have not been taken care of?

It is great to hear that the industry is doing things to tackle the issues and, as we have heard, spending almost £1 billion to do so, including investing in the sea lice treatment vessels, pesticides and cleaner fish. However, the mortality rate between 2018 and 2023 clearly shows that those measures are not really working. I have heard the point that either Ralph Bickerdike or Ben Hadfield raised—I cannot remember who—about the changing conditions, with warmer seawater, el niño and la niña. However, those issues will not go away; they will keep coming back. The warming of the waters fluctuates and we are having to recognise and face that in many sectors across Scotland.

It was also interesting to hear from Constance Pattillo about bubble curtains and that kind of innovation technology but, to me, those sound—

The committee has heard growing evidence that warmer sea temperatures due to climate change are a key cause of increased mortality and fish health issues. This morning, we have discussed the detail of that at length. The committee would be interested to hear whether open-net fish farming has a long-term future, given that sea temperatures are predicted to continue to increase, or whether the industry will need to move to semi-closed or closed containment.

Salmon Scotland’s “Community Engagement Charter” says:

“We believe that salmon farming companies should take a ‘good neighbour’ approach with local communities by operating with transparency and integrity and adopting best practice methods of engagement”,

and that

“where relevant, we will engage communities in a vote to allow the local people to have a direct say in what is happening.”

It goes on to say that Salmon Scotland will

“Consider putting the decision to a community vote—it is the ultimate test of whether the case has been made for a site and has the support of the wider population.”

Have you ever put a vote to the community?

You mentioned a number of islands. What about the new feed barge at Mowi? I do not think that that went to a vote. However, I understand from talking to local people that there was a lot of opposition to it. At a meeting, Mowi said that it is not obliged to inform the community about the expansion plans for the feed barge. Since then, Mowi has withdrawn the application.

My sense from talking to communities is that they feel that they should have the right to know about full expansion plans for salmon farms that operate in their waters. At what point does the industry consider community objection to a particular planning application to be legitimate? If I take the feed barge application as an example, once a community has rejected an application, surely that should be the point at which the industry accepts that, takes notice and lets go of it. However, communities feel that applications get rejected but then the industry comes back with another one. There was a recent example of that happening on Skye.

There is an issue with the charter if industry says, for example, that it wants to listen to communities, that it respects them and that it might put its plans to a vote, but then it doubles down on its plans. Is that because it believes that that is the right place for something to happen for industry? One thing that we heard at the community event was that the community cannot move; they cannot leave that place.

I have a brief follow-up question for Ben Hadfield. You said that you have a plan for appropriate feeding. Will you describe that?

I am just trying to understand if the industry would invest in that.

So why was only one pen—the one that we went to visit—treated?