Make fish farms pay

I am sure many people will be astounded at recent reports that companies which operate salmon farms around the Scottish coast use equipment which can be damaged by seals, a natural resident in our waters.

Fish that are allowed to escape from such intensive farms can suffer and die in their thousands as they are not equipped to survive in the wild. Those that do survive can breed with wild salmon and weaken their gene pool.

In addition, these fish farms view seals as a threat to their profits. Thousands of seals are thought to be shot or drowned each year by fish farms and fishermen. We have internationally important populations in our waters and a moral and legal obligation to protect them. Surely if fish farms are not to provide proper barriers to protect their own fish, then they should be forced to do so by the government.

ROSS MINETT

Advocates for Animals

Queensferry Street

Edinburgh

I see that salmon farming has hit the headlines again this week. Rightly so. I spent two weeks on South Uist in the Outer Isles this summer where we saw, firsthand, the appalling reality of these polluting eyesores. Cages everywhere, used and abandoned; the appalling smell and the fatal infestation of wild fish by the resulting sea-lice blooms.

Why is this industry allowed to continue where all the terrestrial equivalents have been made to clean up? They pollute appallingly, as noted, and provide a fraction of the 8,500 jobs the industry claims: though they have cost many jobs associated with the wild fishing tourism - as stocks of wild salmon and sea trout have been decimated by them.

Why is the evidence being so successfully suppressed?

SWITHUN MASON

La rue du Pont

Grouville, Jersey