How Scottish Government red tape poses a real threat to the UK’s favourite seafood, salmon

Should salmon farming be regulated? Of course it should. Good regulation is not a threat to food production. It’s one of the things that makes consumers trust what they buy. Salmon is the UK’s favourite seafood, but popularity is not enough.

People want to know the food on their plate has been produced responsibly, sustainably, and with proper oversight. That trust matters. When regulation is done well, it reassures consumers, supports retailers, and builds confidence. Done badly, it risks undermining confidence without delivering better environmental outcomes.

Scotland’s salmon farmers produce millions of meals every day that are eaten not just here, but around the world. Salmon grow in cold coastal waters, but like much of the natural environment, the sea has been affected by climate change. Waters are warmer and more variable.

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Scottish salmon is sold all over the world (Picture: Phil Walter) | Getty Images

Managing sea lice

Salmon can cope with a wide range of temperatures, but so can many other organisms in the marine environment, making fish health harder to manage. One of the challenges salmon farmers must manage is sea lice.

These naturally occurring organisms pose no threat to humans, but they can affect fish health if not properly controlled. Managing them is part of everyday fish farming, using techniques that protect welfare and reduce environmental impact.

This is where regulation plays a vital role. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency rightly wants to protect wild salmon and minimise pressures. The sector agreed with Sepa to develop a model to better understand how sea lice behave in the waters around Scotland’s coastline.

Under that approach, farms would be monitored and required to take action, where evidence showed it was necessary, with transparency for anglers and other stakeholders. It should have been a model of how Scotland regulates environmental issues.

Instead, that proportionate approach has been overtaken by a regulatory regime that has added unnecessary layers of restrictions and complexity.

Farms not causing decline of wild salmon

Salmon farms are already subject to rigorous controls on sea lice through planning permissions, yet Sepa’s approach ignores those existing safeguards and assesses risk using hypothetical scenarios that don’t reflect real-world conditions.

Rather than being grounded in robust, validated evidence, the system has become over-precautionary, with a growing number of farms facing Draconian controls.

That matters, because Sepa itself has told the Scottish Parliament on more than two occasions that sea lice from salmon farms are not the cause of declines in wild salmon populations. Government science points to many pressures on wild salmon, like climate change, habitat loss and changes at sea. Focusing regulatory effort in one place may look decisive, but it doesn’t address a cumulative problem.

There’s also a danger that regulation becomes shaped by sustained campaigning pressure from organisations opposed to salmon farming, rather than by what evidence shows protects wild salmon.

For consumers, the consequences are real. When regulation loses sight of evidence and proportion, the result is not better outcomes but less Scottish produce on shelves, greater reliance on imports, and reduced choice.

Scotland needs strong regulation and strong regulators. But it also needs regulation that is balanced, proportionate, and evidence-led. There is a sensible way forward, one that protects wild salmon, sustains coastal communities, and maintains public confidence in a healthy, low-carbon food that Scotland produces better than almost anywhere else in the world.

Tavish Scott is chief executive of Salmon Scotland, the farmed salmon sector’s trade body