New Investigation: Scottish Salmon and Trout Farming Exposed

Did you know that the fish products
that you see packaged in your supermarket
are most likely to have come
from fish farms like this one?
These facilities are basically floating
factory farms
where fish often spend their brief lives
confined in cramped,
dirty and lice ridden pens,
waiting to be sucked up onto boats
for slaughter
or transport to land.
Few people are aware of what
life is like for fish in these farms.
Fewer people still know how
these sensitive animals
are treated at the time of slaughter.
This is intentional.
In 2021,
we released powerful investigative footage
showing fish
being thrown to the ground, beaten
and having their gills
painfully cut while conscious
in an on-land slaughter house
operated by major corporation Bakkafrost
(then known as the Scottish Salmon Company).
Now we've
gone one step further and filmed
slaughter of a different kind.
The industry often confines and kills
fish at sea,
returning to land with their flesh
to be packaged, meaning that the public
and authorities have little knowledge
of what goes on in these slaughter boats.
Even if you get near these boats
it is hard to tell
whether rules are being broken,
with the slaughter
process often hidden from prying eyes.
That's why I decided to pack my bags
and head to Scotland. Using drones,
Animal Equality has been able
to gain access to the secretive Scottish
aquaculture industry, showing the life
and death of farmed fish.
Investigators
filmed boats slaughtering salmon
and trout at farms
off the coast of Scotland.
Our footage unveils
a series of concerning incidents,
including fish being violently thrown,
failure to stun fish with some entering
the killing machine backwards,
smaller fish being
left to suffocate in an empty bucket,
visible overcrowding in nets and bloodied
slaughterhouse machinery
and fish wounded and bleeding
after being slammed
in pipes, transporting them from sea
pens onto boats.
The trout farm is operated by Dawnfresh
Farming, with products marketed under
the 'R R Spink & Sons' brand.
With a royal seal of approval,
R R Spink & Sons is reported
to have supplied many major supermarkets,
as well as luxury restaurants, hotels
and clubhouses.
The salmon farm is operated by Loch Duart Ltd,
and supplies
fine-dining restaurants
having featured on the menus for chefs
like Gordon Ramsay and Rick Stein.
Between them, they have a number of accreditations,
yet despite these credentials,
our footage shows the reality of what life is like
for salmon and trout on these facilities
and it is not as it may first appear to be.
So I am currently here in Campbelltown,
and as you can see
behind me, there are a couple of boats
that we're currently keeping an eye on.
We believe that these two boats
are going to now go to the sea pens
where the salmon are being kept,
and I believe that they're likely going
to slaughter the salmon on the boats.
On all the boats,
the fish are sucked
out of the water through a pump system.
Some of the fish desperately
try to fight the pull of the pump,
but there is no escape.
Fish have incredibly sensitive bodies,
much more prone to injury
and pain than humans.
Imagine how they must feel, their bodies
being thrown against the metal tubing
and against each other as they are
pulled up through the machinery with
great force.
It is no surprise
that blood pools
at the exit of the pump system
as many fish arrive on the boat
battered and bloody.
Once the fish make it onto the boat,
they find themselves on a conveyor belt,
which leads them into a machine
that stuns them and then cuts their gills.
However, we witnessed fish
who were not stunned properly,
meaning they may still be conscious
and able to feel pain during slaughter.
We also captured footage of fish
being violently thrown by workers
and others
who were deliberately left to suffocate.
Fish instinctively stop moving
when exposed to freezing temperatures,
so experts say it is impossible to tell
just how many may still be alive
at the end of the cutting process.
One of the machines in use
is also only able
to effectively stun and kill fish
when they are of a similar size.
but we witnessed fish both big and small
making their way into the machine.
The aquaculture industry
quite cleverly uses terminology
to hide what they do.
They say things like dispatched
instead of slaughter
or percussive stunning,
instead of hitting the fish on the head.
It means that many consumers aren't aware
that in the UK, farmed fish face
the very real prospect of gasping
in their final moments of life
being bludgeoned to death
or being bled to death.
All of this is very possible
because there are currently no
species-specific laws in place for farmed fish
at the time of killing.
That is why we are calling
on the UK Government to make CCTV
mandatory in fish slaughterhouses
and on slaughter boats,
to allow for greater public
scrutiny of these facilities
and to ensure that animal
abuse does not go unpunished.
Sign our petition
today to demand stronger legal protections
for fish.
At the same time,
you can make a difference for fish
right now by choosing to leave them off
your plate.
Fish are often
the forgotten victims of factory farming.
Scientists have proven that they feel pain
and feel joy,
and yet
the laws are lacking to protect them.
We must do more to fight for the animals
that are currently trapped in
this cruel system.