Photo by IvanWalsh
Yesterday's Sunday Herald carried a rather disturbing report about a fish farm near Ullapool in the Highlands. Disturbing for the fact that, despite the farm apparently being riddled with sea lice (they've exceeded the industry's own recommended levels six times this year alone) and the local environment around the farm being damaged, they somehow managed to be awarded a prize by the Crown Estate for "sustainability of the business in it's environment".
The Herald report comes hot on the heels of the BBC Scotland expose of the fish farming industry a couple of weeks ago, which showed that there's no one really watching over fish farms and they effectively self-regulate. The current Scottish Government do have plans to change that somewhat, and hopefully that will open the fish farm industry up to greater scrutiny.
But I do despair over those words in the Crown Estate award to the Ullapool fishery, "Sustainability of the business". The fish farming model is far from sustainable in the long term. One of the reasons for the depletion of fish in the North Sea is that we need more and more of them, not to feed ourselves, but to feed the fish that we keep in cages in our sea lochs.
And it's not just our own environment we're screwing over to produce farmed fish. 28% of the UK's fishmeal comes from Peru, where the local area is being devastated by lax environmental standards. The fishmeal is used to feed farmed fish here, but the locals claim that the factories in Peru cause asthma and skin problems, not to mention the damage to the marine environment caused by the effluent that is just pumped straight back out to sea.
I believe that in 20 years time we'll look back on fish farming as madness, and wonder what the hell we were thinking.
The Isle of Eigg off Scotland's west coast is currently fighting plans for a fish farm next to their island. Please take two minutes to read why they oppose this farm, and sign their petition.
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