Fishing & Shooting

As from August, fish farmers who let salmon escape from cages into the wild will be sent to prison or heavily fined – in Chile, that is.

No such sanctions are anticipated for Scotland. Fish farm operators can let out as many as they like, then wring their hands and blame seals or bad weather when the minister for fish farms Roseanna Cunningham stamps her foot.

The worst that ever happens is that one of the fish farm's customers, usually a supermarket chain with a green mission statement, feels obliged to come over all environmental and threaten to stop trading with the miscreant. The offending fish farm is immediately sold and a fresh start made under a different name.

The reason the government never intervenes in Scotland is because the Aquaculture and Fisheries (Scotland) Act 2007 was never designed to be beastly to the fish farming industry. It was intended to be our old friend "the light regulatory touch", the very same light touch that landed us with a banking crisis.

Ask the civil servants who have to administer this act and they will admit that "enforcement action" means "issuing recommendations". It is rather akin to taking the managing director of the offending fish farm to one side on the 15th tee and telling him that the minister is taking rather a dim view of disease- ridden fish swimming through holes in his net, so if he wouldn't mind getting a better net and not letting it happen again we'll say no more about it. Until the next time. And the next time.

The reason for Chile's action is because escapes range from 600,000 to four million fish a year. As an introduced species they threaten the health of other fish by competing for food, and spreading infectious salmon anemia (ISA) to all the other farms.

ISA has all but wiped out the Norwegian-owned Chilean industry for the time being. What is odd is that here, an SNP-led administration should apparently care so little about our own environment.

It is sea lice from fish farms that have wrecked the West Coast and Irish sea trout fisheries and will surely wreck the poor little River Gress, recently brought back to life by Lewis locals and which is now threatened with a fish farm in the bay.

The Norwegian lice limit is now one louse per ten fish in a cage. The Scottish "target" is one louse per five fish.

So utterly in thrall are Scottish ministers to the fish farm companies, almost exclusively owned by the Norwegians anyway, that they have agreed no one must know the real number of sea lice in Scottish fish farms or whether lice numbers are anywhere near the agreed targets. The companies know, the Government knows but the public may not know on grounds of "commercial confidentiality."

Salmon wallop.

• This Article was first published in The Scotsman on Saturday March 27, 2010