Chamber and committees

Some of this has been touched on, but the committee recommended an immediate end to the siting of salmon farms in the close vicinity of known migratory routes for wild salmon. There is a massive on-going discussion about the interaction between salmon farming and wild salmon and what that means for some of our iconic rivers across Scotland and the wild salmon industry. Do you have an update on that recommendation? More broadly, is any significant work being done on new migratory routes, what is happening with wild salmon, what the interactions are and how things are going to move forward? It is important for the committee to know about that.

Convener, my earlier question might fit into this aspect. Should I ask it now or leave it to the end?

It is a difficult situation, is it not? I found that when we discussed our report previously. We all want to tackle rural depopulation and support an industry that is valuable to Scotland, but, at the same time, we want to ensure that the industry works for communities and the various sectors. That is why what we wrote at the end of our report had a bit of urgency about it—we need to do something here. We need to keep the industry, but that means that we need to show the public that legislation and practices are in place that make the industry the best that it can be, just as we are doing with our wider farm sector.

I want to come back to you on one point. My question slightly covers all the themes that we have gone over. The committee recommended that the Scottish Government

“provide powers to the Fish Health Inspectorate … to limit or halt production at sites which record persistent high mortality rates.”

This is going back slightly, but, in a letter to us, you said that you were going to create a “robust analytical framework”. You then said that upon completion of model validation, outputs would be generated and sites screened as potentially exhibiting persistent elevated mortality would be taken forward for “ground truthing”—I love the term “ground truthing”.

I think that all of that is just related to mortality—that is all that you are looking at. Norway has a traffic light system, which seems easier. That takes into consideration wild salmon populations, disease risk, migration routes, environmental factors and mortality, and then a green, red or amber rating is given. That might mean that a producer might have to halt production, reduce the number of fish in pens or find other approaches. All of that information changes, and it is a very simple approach. I have been reading up on that over the past few days. It seems very publicly accessible, and it would be possible to put it in place in Scotland.

Am I right in saying that your “robust analytical framework” takes into account only mortality? Have you considered adopting a system that is similar to the one in Norway, which would make it easier to stop production, move production and so on?

I think that it can be.

My understanding is that, when the Norway model started, in 2017, it was primarily for sea lice on wild salmon, but since then it has expanded to take other factors into account. That is my understanding—please correct me if I am wrong.

I am trying to consider the importance of high-quality welfare and product and also the community view. Paragraph 311 of our report had a big statement on moratoriums or pauses on production. That came from a massive conversation in the committee, but it was felt that that was pushing it too far. I am not sure that I want to go back to that, but I know that fundamentally the public is demanding that we address the industry’s concerns. I am not sure that your robust analytical framework is doing it for me and that it will give us the outcomes we want.

I am not trying to draw comparisons. I am asking whether the traffic light system is easily understandable and whether it could be adopted in a different way, in a Scottish context, so that we can put all of it together—mortality, disease risk, environmental risk, the wild salmon population—and when the assessors go out on the ground, they can say, “There is persistent high mortality here, so we’re going to move to an amber,” or, “We are clear that the seabed is being damaged here, so we will move to an amber.” Does that make sense? Why can we not adopt a model like that?

So, all of that data is out there, but it is not easily comparable.

You have repeatedly said this morning that you do not think that there is persistent high mortality, yet we do not set a figure for what constitutes high mortality. In the initial evidence session on the matter, you said that you did not think that that was a helpful conversation to have, but our mortality rate is significantly higher than rates in other countries. You would argue that the situations are not directly comparable, but we have a mortality rate that seems to be worse than rates in other countries. Is that in itself not evidence that we have a problem that needs to be addressed?

I am trying to get to the day-to-day practicality. It goes back to Fin Carson asking whether a fish farm would need to be shut down. I wrote down what you said earlier about that, because you said that companies are not in control because of various other factors. My point is that, if there is a fish farm at X location in Scotland where the mortality rate sometimes hits 60 per cent but often hits 20 to 30 per cent, the Government needs to be able to step in to say that it is irrelevant whether the situation is within the company’s control: if there are environmental conditions, such as warmer waters or whatever it might be, causing that mortality rate, the farm cannot continue. Despite Edward Mountain’s report coming out in 2018—eight years ago—the Government has yet to get to a position where it has any system in place to challenge the situation on the ground.

Are you putting in place any interim measures relating to environmental harm while all of that is going on in the background?

On the wider point about what is going on in the background, not directly related to this matter, there is a lot of private work going on to restore salmon populations in rivers. I do not want to get too distracted by that, because we are talking about salmon farming, but it is relevant, because people bring that into the conversation about salmon farming. Is wider work being done to look at the interactions between wild and farmed salmon?