Ministers bow to salmon industry pressure on pesticide

A new safety limit on a pesticide that kills marine wildlife has been delayed by four years following pressure from the salmon farming industry.

The Scottish Government has said it will not introduce restrictions on the toxic chemical, emamectin, until 2028 because of opposition from fish farming companies.

Environmental groups condemned the delay as “completely unacceptable”, saying ministers should be “ashamed of themselves”.  The use of emamectin had to be “drastically reduced” now to protect wildlife and the shellfishing industry, they claimed.

The Scottish Government, however, insisted that the delay was the “best fit” for the industry’s “planning and investment horizons”, and would end up protecting the environment.

The salmon industry said it had “engaged fully” to establish a “scientifically robust” limit providing “a high margin of safety” to protect the environment.

Emamectin is fed to caged salmon to kill the lice that can plague them. But it is excreted and pollutes lochs around Scotland, killing prawns, crabs, lobsters and other crustaceans.

Its dangers were identified by the government’s Scottish Environment Protection Agency (Sepa) in 2016. But since then, as The Ferret reported in 2023, the salmon farming industry has successfully and repeatedly lobbied to relax proposed safety limits.

Pesticide safety limit watered down after industry lobbying

Sepa initially suggested a complete ban on emamectin, but this was secretly abandoned after pressure from salmon companies and the Scottish Government. Instead, in October 2017, Sepa set an “interim” limit on the amount allowed in marine sediments of 12 nanograms per kilogram (ng/kg).

This limit did not apply to most of Scotland’s 200 salmon farms, but only to applications for new farms or to increase discharges from existing farms. Between 2017 and 2023 the limit was raised three times following a series of interventions by the industry, ending up at 272 ng/kg – 23 times higher than Sepa’s initial limit.

On 24 June 2024, the Scottish Government published its response to a consultation on when to introduce the 272 ng/kg safety limit for existing salmon farms. It said that it would direct Sepa to implement them “in 48 months”, the longest delay on which it had consulted.

This means that when the new limit comes into effect in 2028, it will be 12 years since Sepa first sounded the alarm. 

According to the Scottish Government’s report, it had to balance “significant concerns” from the industry with “a requirement to protect the environment”. 

It added: “Sepa will work with the operators of fish farms to make the improvements or mitigate the effects on their operations of doing so.”

Safety limit opposed by salmon industry

Three of the big multinational salmon farming companies – Mowi, Bakkafrost and Scottish Sea Farms – made submissions to the consultation strongly opposing the safety limit. Their trade association, Salmon Scotland, made similar representations. 

The companies criticised the regulatory process, questioned the science underlying the limit, and asked for it to be withdrawn. It was not “appropriate” to adopt the limit “without any further consideration of its suitability as a regulatory control for the activities of marine fish farms,” said Salmon Scotland.

The limit was “disproportionate” and emamectin was “negligible and inconsequential compared to other potential sources of insecticide pollution”, the group argued. 

Salmon Scotland also pointed out that there was “currently no comparable alternative” to emamectin. “Any reduction in a farmer’s ability to use emamectin will have unintended negative consequences on the environment, through a need to use alternative medicinal interventions,” it warned.

Mowi’s submission attacked Sepa. The development of the safety limit “has been a low point in the regulation of the sector by Sepa and has been driven by a need to appease activism which has significantly misrepresented the environmental effects”, the company said.

Salmon farms ‘should be fined’ for breaches

But in its submission to the consultation, the Scottish Government’s wildlife agency, NatureScot, argued for the limit to be introduced “as soon as possible”, particularly in areas with endangered marine species.

The environmental charity, Fidra, based in North Berwick, pointed out that salmon farmers had known for years that a new limit was coming. “The industry should be capable of making the transition in a very short timescale”, it said. 

Fidra also urged tougher action against companies that breached the emamectin limit. “Consideration should be given to breaches being routinely fined, which has the possibility to influence industry to monitor its discharges more stringently to avoid breaches,” it suggested.

The National Trust for Scotland wanted the limit to come into force “immediately” to protect marine wildlife. A scientific study in 2017 found that emamectin could reduce the number of crustaceans near salmon farms by 83 per cent, it said.

The use of emamectin should be “drastically reduced” because it was toxic and persisted in the environment, the trust’s head of public policy, Diarmid Hearns, told The Ferret.

“The damage to the environment needs to be reduced as quickly as possible,” he said. “We believe waiting up to four years will unduly delay improvement in the quality of Scotland’s coastal waters.”

The Coastal Communities Network, which brings together 24 groups in Scotland keen to protect the marine environment, warned that the salmon farming industry was “desperate” to keep using emamectin.

“The ministers responsible should be ashamed of themselves for allowing this process to be dragged out over such a long time,” said the network’s John Aitchison.

“They have ignored Sepa’s duty to prevent the impacts of dumping pesticides on other users of the sea. Emamectin is deadly to crustaceans, including the crabs, lobsters and prawns on which many fishermen depend.”

Aitchison added: “This is the only industry that Sepa allows to dump pesticides in the sea.”

The campaign group, Wildfish, pointed out that the volume of emamectin used by the salmon farming industry in Scotland increased 14 per cent between 2018 and 2023.

“This latest delay is yet another example of Sepa failing to adequately protect the environment from the devastating impact of open-net salmon farms,” said the group’s director in Scotland, Rachel Mulrenan.

“It’s completely unacceptable that it will have taken 12 years for our supposed environment watchdog to apply stricter limits on its use.”

Revealed: the salmon industry’s ‘outrageous’ lobbying

The Scottish Government defended the four-year delay in introducing a safety limit as a way of avoiding a “cliff edge approach” which would force some salmon farms to stop using emamectin entirely.

The delay was “the best fit with planning and investment horizons allowing operators to make the improvements or mitigate the effects on their operations,” said a government spokesperson.

“Sepa advises that when the directions come into force, introducing the new standard will allow the environment to progressively recover to the new standards level.”

Sepa highlighted that it was already applying the new safety limit to proposals for new or expanded salmon farms. The limit was based on “the best available scientific evidence on the toxicity of the medicine to aquatic life”, said the agency’s head of ecology, Peter Pollard.

“We have begun work to calculate updated licence conditions. These will reduce the quantities of emamectin that can be discharged and enable the progressive recovery of the environment from the effects of past discharges,” he added. 

“We will ensure these new conditions come into force, and are complied with, in accordance with the timetable set by Scottish Government.”

Salmon Scotland stressed that fish farmers took their responsibilities to the environment very seriously. They “provide world-leading standards of animal health and welfare that are independently verified,” said the organisation’s technical head, Dr Iain Berrill.

“We have engaged fully in the process to establish a scientifically robust standard which is based on the most up-to-date and rigorous evidence available, adheres to European guidelines, and includes a high margin of safety to protect the marine environment.”

The Ferret’s previous revelations about the salmon farming industry’s eight-year campaign to block tougher environmental controls on emamectin, marketed as Slice, resulted in the affair being dubbed “Slicegate” by campaigners.

This Ferret story was also published in the Sunday National. Our partnerships with other media help us reach new audiences and become more sustainable as a media co-op.  Join us to read all our stories and tell us what we should investigate next.

Cover image thanks to iStock/sugar0607.