Westminster's fisheries minister 'irresponsible' says Scottish salmon farming industry

Published on Sunday 9 January 2011 15:57

SCOTLAND'S salmon farming industry has branded Westminster's fisheries minister "ill-informed and irresponsible" after he suggested consumers should consider switching to wild species for environmental reasons.

Richard Benyon claimed that diners should choose fish such as wild gurnard, megrim sole or dab, instead of eating farmed salmon - which generates 500 million a year for the Scottish economy.

The MP's comments come ahead of a TV programme this week featuring chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall which will claim that three kilos of wild fish are required to produce a single kilo of farmed salmon.

In his Fish Fight season of documentaries, which begins on Channel 4 tomorrow, Fearnley-Whittingstall is expected to demonstrate how wild fish fed to farmed salmon is made up of stocks of anchovies and other small species, many of them shipped in from South America.

"We could not only be improving the livelihoods of our fisherman but the health of our seas if we could take a more eclectic, a more diverse look at the species we eat," said Mr Benyon.

"The legitimate question is 'what are they feeding the salmon?' If it involves Hoovering up large quantities of fish in other parts of the world in order to make the fishmeal to feed salmon in our part of the world, is that a sustainable activity? Is that something we are comfortable with? The alternative is to look at perhaps eating other species."

However, his comments have sparked outrage in Scotland, where fisheries is a devolved issue.

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Mr Benyon admitted: "It will outrage my colleagues in Scotland if I say any more than that, but I do think there are questions to be asked about certain aspects of salmon farming and the impact it is having on wild salmon stocks and the health of certain rivers."

He added: "I have to be careful, it is not a black-and-white situation."

Scott Landsburgh, chief executive of the Scottish Salmon Producers' Organisation, said Mr Benyon's comments were detrimental to the industry, which employs 6,200 people north of the Border.

"It concerns me that the fisheries minister is so ill-informed and irresponsible," he said."There is simply no basis in fact to much of the vitriol that is aimed at one of Scotland's most successful food industries."

He claimed that Fearnley-Whittingstall's figures were inaccurate and pointed to a letter from the Peruvian government telling Scottish fish farmers that they had a surplus of five million tonnes of anchovies which are not needed for human consumption in their country.

"Farmed salmon is a healthy, nutritious and sustainable protein," he said, adding that industry data shows that just 1.68kg of fresh fish is needed to produce 1kg of fresh salmon for human consumption.

"On average, farmed salmon use 83 per cent less fish meal and fish oil than would be eaten by salmon growing in the wild.

"The feed industry and fish farmers have highlighted to celebrity chefs, such as Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, the enormous progress achieved to make farmed salmon one of the most efficient farmed livestocks."

Gerry Goldwyre, Scottish restaurateur and twice-winner of the BBC's MasterChef competition, warned that the "alternatives" suggested to consumers were very different to salmon.

"I would like to say to him, 'Mr Benyon, come to my restaurant and I'll cook one dish with salmon and you cook the other with the alternatives and we'll see which people prefer,'" said Mr Goldwyre, who runs the Water Tower restaurant in Eskbank, Midlothian. "These other fish are white fish - not oily like salmon. They are also not widely available - I can't remember having seen wild gurnard in the shops."