Fish Expert Reacts To Scottish Salmon Footage On BBC Countryfile

hi there I'm abig gal peny the executive
director of the charity animal equality
UK we're the group that successfully
encouraged BBC country file to look into
the issues within the Scottish salmon
industry here in this interview you can
see as I speak with the world leading
aquatic animal expert Jennifer jaet
about what she feels was covered well
during the piece what was missing and
why she feels so passionately about
speaking up for our underwater friends I
hope that you find it ful and eye
opening I certainly did Jennifer hi um
thank you so much for joining me today
and especially so quickly after uh the
BBC country file program has just aired
I think about 30 minutes ago it finished
um I know I have a lot of thoughts no
doubt you do too so I'm very keen to
hear your reaction um I can also see on
Twitter that lots of people are getting
involved in the conversation to express
their disgust over the footage that
they've seen um but before we do get
into the details of the various Scottish
summon scandals that exist it would be
great if you could just tell us a bit
about yourself your role and your
expertise in the area of marine life and
environments oh thank you thanks for
having me on I am Jennifer jacket I an
professor of environmental science and
policy here at the University of Miami
and I have been working in fisheries and
aquaculture AS Global Systems for about
15 years now
uh I am very interested in the
development of offshore aquaculture and
very interested in the impacts of
finfish farming on
ecology uh food security and of course
uh Animal Welfare it's really impressive
uh you know to have spent that much time
dedicated to this is uh really quite
incredible uh I'm really grateful for
you to give up your time to talk to us
um so I know that I was furiously
scribbling away uh during the 10-minute
program um and I've been collecting my
thoughts ever since um so for those
viewers who haven't seen the full piece
yet for me one of the key takeaways
seemed to be informing consumers about
the rising rate of on Farm deaths um we
saw in the program that Matt Palmer from
the group Wildfish said on Country file
that one in four salmon die before even
reaching the abattoir so we know that
something like 16.7 million Scottish
salmon died before reaching the
slaughter house last year and if action
isn't taken quickly 2023 is looking like
it's going to be the deadliest year on
record um when I pitched the program to
Country file I emphasized this point
because to me these mortalities are
emblematic of the many devastating
impacts of this industry we know for
example that salmon faced so many
problems during their short lives um and
I was pleased to see that the BBC did
include a lot of the undercover footage
that was provided by animal equality um
showing a lot of fish suffering in
underwater cages and many people aren't
aware of that so what do you think
causes these mortalities and what can be
done to curb the
problem well I you know I have to trust
the the program to some extent or or
even the Farms to some extent when
they're attributing deaths to jellyfish
and water temperatures I don't have
access to that data nobody really does
right now except for you know the the
broader situation
but that kind of localized event we
largely trust the industry for for those
sources of mortality across
Industries um and I don't think that
those sources of mortality are going to
be easing up unfortunately in the
anthropos scene we do know it's a
particularly bad year due to El Nino and
world record hot temperatures but as
you're pointing out the one in4 is
actually from last year and this year we
may actually be seeing higher mortality
rates
the thing for me about the program was
that the emphasis on fish welfare was
really revolutionary really wonderful to
see the BBC involved seriously in the
conversation incorporating the voices of
veterinarians of course industry um also
organizations like yours but from my
perspective you know welfare is only the
tip of the iceberg we have this huge
mortality of course that goes into the
fish meal industry to feed these fish
and then all of these other issues like
pollution as a result of the feed uh
antibiotic overuse and sea ice
transmission and those weren't really
covered to the extent that at least I I
work on them and so the welfare angle
was new it was fresh it was great but I
felt like it didn't get into a lot of
the broader issues I absolutely agree I
was actually really surprised to see
that there was not really anything
mentioned about the scale of the
environment m al impact that the
industry has you know we know as you
mentioned that salmon are carnivorous
animals um one salmon is responsible for
consuming around 150 other smaller fish
during their lifetime and this is
absolutely wiping out our wild fish
stocks and causing havoc in the oceans
but also on top of that we know that
farmed fish often escape and then will
mate with wild salmon um and that
there's a high use of chemicals to get
rid of the lice that are so prolific in
these Fish Farms so given all of these
facts and your expertise over the past
decade and a half um do you think that
Scottish salmon farming can ever be
sustainable I don't think that finfish
farming can be sustainable frankly under
these conditions I mean you're talking
about farming carnivores which is
something we don't do on land so you see
a lot of false equivalencies drawn
across these industries you heard it in
the program at several points like oh
this is like chicken or or like taking
care of pigs and then uh one of the
industry Representatives mentioned that
whenever you have uh you're producing
protein you have imput inputs and
impacts but this is a false equivalency
because if you're using plant-based
proteins the impacts are much lower even
on terrestrial protein if you want to
talk about animals in that ter under
those terms this is a really different
system you they're still still
herbivores you are feeding them enormous
amounts of grain that impact the amaz on
and other places and it's still
inefficient from almost any point of
view but it's very different than
farming carnivores so that was another
kind of slip in the program where you
see these false equivalencies drawn
across when you flatten something to
protein um you can make those kind of
arguments but really we're talking about
carnivores versus herbivores versus
eating plant-based proteins and if we
looked at that whole picture as
scientists have done many times the
benefits of of focusing on the plant BAS
based proteins for human nutrition is
just is just
obvious yeah absolutely and I think um
you know animal equality of course we're
here in defense of of animals and their
sentience we know in the UK they
recently introduced the sentient Bill
recognizing animals as capable of
feeling pain and that included farmed
fish too and as you say not only is
there scientific consensus that salmon
feel pain but also that Atlantic salmon
are migratory animals who in the world
would travel many many miles Upstream so
it seems to me especially cruel that
they would be confining them in crowded
cages for their entire lives when
they're not able to carry out most of
their most basic natural behaviors uh
you know what do you think life is like
for for farmed salmon yeah again I I had
a I have a real issue when you just
reduce kind of farmed animals into that
one category because the animals
themselves are so different and I think
we know so much less about farm salmon
um they're relatively recently
domesticated for your point compared to
wild salmon um they I mean and certainly
compared to wild salmon they're still
you know very closely related to them
but also compared to farmed chicken and
farmed pigs and and farmed cows and
we're not talking about thousands of
years of domestication the way we are in
those systems they certainly still have
the desire to migrate as you point out
which is why they circling in the net
pens and that's also um you know some
people have speculated a source of
aggression you see uh a lot of cases in
that undercover footage of of what looks
to be like victims of aggression
potentially or of of or of jellyfish
it's sort of hard to attribute why
they're in such bad shape um in one case
I saw one of the fish had you know was
looked maybe like it had a fungal
infection or it was not it was in really
rough shape so um so again it's a little
hard to say and and the system is pretty
new you know they talked about this
woman having worked on the farms for 27
years that's still nothing like you know
farming sheep in Mesopotamia these are
really new systems we are still at a
point where we can decide whether or not
we want to take this path forward and it
was really heartening to me to hear that
um the Scottish government had already
decided that we they didn't want to move
the pens further offshore there's sort
of a stay on that at the moment and it
was framed as a missed Opportunity by
industry but I would call it more like
preventative medicine I mean this is
really uh a good decision in the face of
so much uncertainty and so many obvious
risks yeah I agree that was it's a good
segue actually into my next question for
you which is you know it was pretty
clear industry representatives for
example from Lo long salmon in the BBC
program they implied that certain
Technologies might be the answer like
semi closed containers which as I
understand it are essentially the same
as C pens really but have a sort of
balloon underneath that captures the
feces and prevents the lights from
getting through um or as you mentioned
on land factory farms for fish as well
and both of these Technologies are
particularly worrying to me because
they're heralded as if they're a fix all
solution uh but we know that okay they
may fix one problem but then they'll
cause a whole heap of their own um and
as you say Scotland has rejected them
already but there's still a bit of an
appeal process going on but also
similarly in Canada and British Columbia
they were very quickly closed down with
these semi uh closed containers because
of technical failures and mass
mortalities so what do you think of this
sort of trial and error approach and
these supposed
Innovations yeah I mean I think you you
said it well the truth is that it only
addresses one of the many issues that we
talked about right it doesn't address
the welfare concerns it doesn't address
the fish meal issue which again has
knock on welfare concerns because you're
having to kill Wildfish to feed to these
farmed fish and it doesn't um deal with
also the question that we haven't talked
much about which is what is this all for
I mean they introduced the program as
this is our large export industry it's
not about feeding the Scottish people
and they also said you know it's really
about uh the the economy and about the
jobs um we can have an economy and jobs
built around anything you know we had
there was a segment right before that
one about sort of um
maintaining um nature preserves for
Birds you know you could easily employ
people to restore uh aquatic systems for
wild salmon that may ultimately draw
wild salmon Watchers the way that we
have bird watchers we have to sort of
rethink our relationships entirely in
the 21st century under all these
pressures and so if it's just about jobs
and the economy we can be much more
imaginative we're it's not about feeding
people that's the fortunate thing
because farm salmon is really a luxury
product it is just there to create money
and we can create money in all sorts of
other ways yeah I couldn't have put it
better myself and I actually think it's
it's a shame when I hear that argument
come up because they're actually failing
to Future proof people jobs um and
that's the part of the puzzle that never
never really gets attention is that you
know if they carry on in this
unsustainable way there will be no way
for these jobs to still exist in a
decade's time or a few decades time so
really they are putting people out of
jobs Long Term if they don't start to
change with the times and and
acknowledge that this is a an inherently
cruel and unsustainable industry um to
me it is particularly apparent that uh
the Scottish salmon industry is not
being properly regulated
more must be done by the government so
if you had the opportunity to speak to a
Scottish politician today what would you
say to them what would be your call to
action I mean my call to action would be
to listen to the scientific advice the
science is very clear uh finfish farming
was recommended against since the 1970s
scientists have been urging the system
to move away from carnivorous species to
move more toward B valves which for
which there are fewer sentience concerns
as well and towards seaweeds that uh we
could do aquaculture or mariculture in
ways that met these criteria that fed
people that didn't uh destroy the the
Wildfish that restored
ecosystems and we have opportunity to do
to to do so unfortunately there are
massive amounts of subsidies behind
salmon farms and that's part of the
reason why they persist it isn't about a
kind of clar it or vision for the future
so much as a kind of existing power
structure that we have to dismantle in
the same way that we have to think about
um ending fossil fuel use I mean these
are this really is as you point out
fundamentally unsustainable it doesn't
have a future and in the meantime it's
causing um a lot of short-term problems
as well for the animals but even for the
the local environments and one thing the
program didn't mention and you often
don't see mentioned is how many places
have actually put in uh bands in place
on on finfish farming so the state of
Alaska has has banned finfish farming
from the start because of course they
have wild salmon um parts of British
Columbia are phasing out uh farm salmon
one of the biggest mistakes that
Province ever
made uh we have I think the state of
Washington now Banning non-native um
fish farms and um did you see in Tira
del Fuego Argentina they put in a
preemptive ban on offshore farming uh or
net pen farming and given I I think
Denmark too froze the the the footprint
um and so when you see other countries
around the world are making these
decisions there is obvious a clear
scientific basis for doing so um and a
clear Democratic push for that so I hope
that the the Scottish government and
Parliament will turn to the science and
look for um and look for the
evidence absolutely me too it actually
fills me with a lot of optimism uh to
talk to to people like you and to see
some of the the changes that are
happening all around us all around the
globe so um thank you so much for your
time for sharing your thoughts and your
insights so eloquently um I'm really
very grateful for everything that you do
and I have a great deal of respect um
that you are dedicating your your time
and your profession to speaking up for
these often neglected
animals you as well of course thanks for
having me on and sharing the program
thanks
Jennifer as the Scottish salmon industry
grows so does the risk that these
Associated issues will grow too the best
thing that you can do as a consumer is
to ditch salmon and swap for plant-based
Alternatives instead it's never been
easier but also we're calling on the
Scottish government to use its power and
stop this industry in its tracks so
please have your voice heard too sign
our petition and speak up for farmed
fish today thank
you