00.07

In what remains of our wild heritage, there is no more telling symbol of the untamed than the salmon.

00.17

The Romans called this fish Salmo - the leaper - and its spectacular behaviour has always been an inspiration to artists and poets as well as a challenge to fishermen.

00.37

The life history of the Atlantic salmon embodies many of the qualities we most admire: beauty, power, grace and endurance. These fish moving relentlessly upstream to spawn are coming to the end of an astonishing journey which started when they migrated down these same rivers as juveniles and made their way from fresh water, far out to sea. Since then they have travelled thousands of miles and for at least a year, before returning to the river of their origin to breed and usually to die.

Julian PTC If that’s how you picture the King of Fish - the leaper - the great ocean nomad, you’ll be as surprised as I was to learn the most of the Atlantic salmon in the world today - 98% of them - are not wild at all - they’re captives living their brief lives confined in cages like these in Loch Ewe on the West coast of Scotland. This is aquaculture - the intensive cultivation of aquatic species, that’s become the world’s fastest growing food sector.

Nowadays most salmon instead of making epic journeys, swim in never-ending circles towards their unavoidable destiny on our dinner tables. To meet this growing market, the number of salmon farms in Scotland alone has risen from zero three decades ago to more than 300, providing jobs and investment in remote areas like this where both are badly needed. That’s the plus side - but is there a downside too.

02.10 Do wild salmon pick up deadly parasites from salmon farms and never return to their river to breed ?

James Butler: With 1% coming back which is very very poor, we would have expected 7 or so fish, we’ve had nothing. Well, we’re certainly looking at an extinction scenario.

2.25 And when millions of farmed salmon escape into the wild, is it merely an unfortunate accident ?

Calvin Sidar: Actually the responsibility to have these swimming in the wild. They could not care less about the environment around them - it’s all the almighty dollar.

02.41 For health reasons, we’re encouraged to eat oily fish like farmed salmon; but does it contain contaminants posing risks if we eat too much of it?

Paul Johnston: There is a possibility of damage to the unborn child, and obviously because of that a vulnerable section of the population has to be pregnant women and women that are or intend to nurse their children.

3.04 The industrial farming of salmon has made a luxury food cheap and plentiful; but what’s the price in real terms, for us and for the environment?

TITLES

3.27 Willie Macintosh is a commercial net fisherman on the West Coast of Scotland. In the past, there were hundreds like him, sharing a large annual harvest of wild salmon and sea trout. Not any longer. Now Willie is on his own, the last netsman on the Coast.

WILLIE It’s come to an end. There was dozens of netting stations in those days and the fishing then was very good, you may be a few hundred fish a day. It made it very quite profitable. But it’s gone down from hundreds just down to nothing now.

04.03 Commercial fishermen like Willie Macintosh were always disliked by sport fishermen who blamed them for their poor catches. But now, on the nearby River Lochy, the anglers must look for other scapegoats. Jim Semple has fished this river for twenty years.

Jim Semple: This place should be alive with fish at this time of year, so something must be terribly wrong. Here we have the most magnificent stretch of water, but I haven’t had a single fish look at me - oh ah - indeed, I’ve only seen about 2 fish rising in this vast area.

04.40 In Scotland and elsewhere, wild salmon declined and salmon farms proliferated; and as it grew, aquaculture was soon dominated by a few big multinationals like Nutreco, which owns Marine Harvest, a top producer in Scotland. Graham Dear is managing director.

Graeme Dear: Aquaculture as a whole globally has enormous potential; the stocks in the sea by and large become depleted; and I think if people want to eat fish, it’s a very very healthy product. Aquaculture is the way forward. We would feel that the salmon we rear are actually reared in very very good environmental conditions. They’re reared out here in the sea, with very good tidal exchange; the quality of the water is good; the quality of the fish that we produce is good. Now some people may look at this and say, ‘But it’s intensive’, but others may look at it and say, no it’s fine. I would say that because I’m a salmon farmer, but it is the real thing, and you only have to take one of these fish out of the cage and look at it and you can see it is the real thing. In terms of quality, it’s a very very high quality product. I would say that farmed salmon can generate a much more consistent type of fish than a wild fish.

6.02 In some nearby rivers, wild fish are consistent only in their absence. They’ve become extinct; but not yet in the Tournaig. Here, a few wild salmon are still breeding, and after spending two or three winters in fresh water, the juveniles or smolts show the colour change that say they're ready to migrate out to sea. There they'll remain for at least a year before returning here to spawn. But season after season, fewer salmon re-appear and these two fisheries biologists are trying to find out why.

Dr James Butler. ‘What we are trying to do is monitor the population of wild salmon on the west coast of Scotland which has never been done before. Using the trap. What we do is we count how many young salmon, that is to say smolt, go to sea every year and then how many of them come back as adult fish. And it will be very interesting this summer to see how many are coming back. I suspect very few.’

I think its a great shame because when you look at a smolt going to sea they are almost miracles of natural engineering they are built to survive and travel thousands of miles. No matter how fantastic nature is at producing these long travelling, long surviving fish we seem to some how be able to cock it up.’

07.34

Each smolt is tagged, identified with a harmless dye so that if it returns and is recaptured in the trap there will be a true record of marine survival.

07.50

But its chances are not good. Hundreds of departing fish have been tagged here each year, with as few as four returning the following season. Why? And why is this miserable survival rate six times worse here than on the east coast of Scotland. This year on the Tournaig only 300 smolts set off for the sea, fewer than ever, and for the scientists, the loss is more than statistics.

Dr Jon Watt: The wild salmon in this river have given a lot, both in terms of pleasure and recreation and support for net fisheries, and support for hotels. People have really taken for hundreds of years and now these fish are in trouble. I think there is a responsibility for people to take the threats to the fish very seriously and to do something about it.

Dr James butler: They will disappear and that’s a fact and I think that’s very very sad.

You sort of feel they don’t have a hope in hell more or less, wish them luck.

08.59 The very first stage of their salt-water journey takes them out into Loch Ewe, As the wild smolts pass the salmon farms and head for open water, they will pick up currents that will carry them north towards Greenland.

Graphic

This is where the Norwegian Fisheries Research vessel is waiting for them. On board are government scientists, investigating the fate of salmon smolts. Dr. Jens Christian Holst believes that the fish are dying at sea and that the principle killers are parasites known as sea-lice. To prove his case, he must first find the salmon and capture them alive and uninjured. To do this, special equipment has been designed, but there is still a measure of luck involved.

Dr Jens Christian Holst: It’s a yes. These are probably British post-smolts. This is quite badly affected. I would say that this fish was about to die.

09.57 Sea lice are parasites that feed on the mucus, skin and blood of the salmon. An adult female louse has trailing egg strings that can produce more than a thousand larvae. The larvae detaches itself and drifts freely on the ocean currents for up to three weeks before it must find a host to feed on and survive.

10.20 The concentration of these larvae, as Norwegian researchers discovered, is now much greater in the fjords than before the coming of the fish farms. But there was one more vital connection to make.

Dr Jens Christian Holst: ‘The main question we wanted to really prove was whether wild salmon juveniles die from sea lice in the wild. We caught them in the fjord mouth where the fjord enters the open ocean. Its quite a large fjord with several salmon rivers and also a significant amount of salmon fish farms in the same system.’

10.59 200 juvenile salmon were caught. Half were given a chemical treatment that rid them of all sea lice. They were then kept in tanks in identical conditions to the remainder of the fish that were still carrying the parasites. Very soon, these fish began to die. Those most heavily infested were the first to go.

Dr Jens Christian Holst: The fishes in this aquarium as you can see are hardly able to swim any more and this fish has the so called death crown. The death crown is actually a wound on the skull and the sea lice will sit in a circle around the wound eating the skin away from the skull top. This is a very certain sign of a quick death.’

11.51 In the control tanks in the absence of sea lice the salmon remained healthy. What conclusions are drawn from this? Do other studies point a finger of suspicion at sea lice from fish farms?

Dr Jens Christian Holst: ‘The main point here is that all these different investigations, and there really quite many at the moment are showing exactly the same things, the same patterns and that’s why we are claiming or saying very strongly that it is a huge problem. And its also why we are co-operating with the fish farmers in order to cope with it on the long term.’

12.28 Everywhere in Scotland, salmon and sea trout are in decline for many reasons - that's accepted.

GRAPHIC But the decline is far greater on the west coast - where fish farms are concentrated - than on the east coast where there are few.

Just as sea lice kill wild fish, they’re also a major threat to the aquaculture industry itself and affect most farms. Even if every fish had only one sea louse, a farm like this one at Loch Ewe could produce billions of larvae. To kill the parasites chemical treatments are incorporated into the feed. But sea lice control is never perfect.

James Butler: So within one sea loch we have got 25 times as many farmed salmon as well as wild salmon for the whole West Coast of Scotland. Obviously when you have got so many salmon in one tiny area like this, disease and parasites tend to proliferate as they would within any sort of livestock.’

Graphic Quite recent research has shown that in the spring time now the sea lice actually boost their production of larvae which then discharge and drift away from the fish farm and therefore any wild smolts coming out from the rivers have to come through this veil of parasites in order to get out to the open sea and consequently get infected in high numbers.

13.52 In Norway, that is accepted fact and sea lice controls are strictly enforced., Dr. Reid Hole, is Norwegian and he’s Director of Technology and Development for Nutreco, the world's leading producer of Atlantic salmon which owns many of Scotland's fish farms; Yet he denies the farms have contributed to the decline of wild salmon.

Reid Hole: I don’t accept that we have a direct correlation on something when we don’t have evidence so far. There is a suspicion but there is no evidence to that is the case.

Julian Pettifer: ‘Is it not a good idea to act on the precautionary principle. Isn’t that wise.

Reid Hole. When an industry is growing I agree that that is the start of it but I would say that over years we also need to carry out research and objective research to really find out if that is the case or not.’

14.50 Those who feel the case has already, been made are upset at this stubborn refusal to acknowledge that wild fish have been sacrificed to aquaculture . Until this happens, they fear there will be little incentive for the industry to do whatever is necessary to reduce se-lice to the level when wild fish won’t be infected.

15.12 And in the offices of the Scottish Executive in Edinburgh you hear the same argument: that there's not enough evidence to blame fish farms.

Ross Finnie: What I am not prepared to accept is that there is an absolute proven causal link between these two, the fact that the actual outflow of those rivers happens to coincide with deep water that is appropriate for salmon farming. I am not prepared to accept that these two have been firmly established.

15.38 For scientists like James Butler, waiting vainly for his salmon to return, that statement is frustrating. His work has led him to the opposite conclusion; and he knows his reasoning is even supported by government scientists.

James Butler: All we are doing is what government scientists have been trying to do in the past but their scientists have been hushed up. We are just repeating the work and we are floating it out in public its either hushed up or discredited or completed ignored and hoped it will go away but I am afraid it won’t and to the best of our abilities we will continue trying to put this information out.

16.15 The suggestion that government scientists have been hushed up and forbidden to talk about the threat posed by sea lice from fish farms has been widely rumoured. Andy Walker is a biologist with the government's fresh water fish lab. When we went to interview him he was trawling Loch Shieldaig for sea lice larvae - attended at a distance, by two minders from the Information Department. We knew that Dr Walker and other colleagues had long suspected that salmon farms play a part in the decline of wild fish. We'd also heard that he had been leaned on not to voice his suspicions.

Everything suggested that lengthy discussions with the minders were supposed to determine what Dr Walker might and might not say and that he was under considerable pressure.

Was he going to speak his mind?

Andrew Walker: I think there is a lot of conjecture about this and there is a widespread view that many of the sea lice are coming from fish farms. Because there are many salmonid fish in fish farms which have parasites on them which have sea lice on them. Now the fish farmers are waging a war against these lice to try to eradicate them and the wild fish interests are desperate that they should win this war so we think this is certainly part of the problem that the mortality of the wild fishes is created by lice emanating from fish farms but we are trying to work together with them to solve the problem.

We would like to have had traps in these rivers and would have liked to have got hard information on numbers of fish travelling up and down. This should have been addressed along time ago but money is always scarce and people have to compete for the resources. And it is the case that it is only when things become really serious that the money gets diverted to these situations.

18.09 We asked Dr Walker whether resources are now sufficient.

That is certainly not something I could give a view on camera about. I don’t think I could give a very good view anyway. It is such a wide question somebody higher has to make decisions on this.

INTERRUPTION. I don’t think that’s something . . .

Andy Walker: No way. I’m sure you guys will assess that at the end of the programme.

Julian Pettifer: When our researcher spoke to a press officer in a marine laboratory and he was told and I quote: ‘If Andy Walker says anything about what impacts he believes aquaculture and that’s salmon farming, is having on wild stocks he’ll be out of a job. And another scientist, I cannot name, said “It is widely known that fish farms are involved, and he is talking about sea lice, and to pretend otherwise is a sheer farce, they are leaning on me to say nothing.

Ross Finnie: If you’re suggesting to me that there are people out there and think this is a serious allegation your making, that you are putting in here that there are people actively leaning on scientists to tell untruths about the state of sea-lice as far as I am concerned there is a problem. I am not aware of anyone in my department who has ever hidden from that. And it is certainly not a matter of our policy.

The Scottish Executive has made a further statement saying the issue remains inconclusive; and that government scientists are constrained by the same conduct as other civil servants.

They also make clear that they have launched a range of initiatives to improve understanding of sea lice and how they can be better controlled.

These include the a scheme where fish farms enter into voluntary agreements with wild fish interests to eradicate sea lice and preserve wild stocks. So far very few such agreements have been made.

19.42 It’s all very different in Norway, where half the world’s farmed salmon is produced. Solveig Nygaard is a veterinary inspector who makes regular statutory reports on levels of sea lice on fish farms. Any farm breaching the limit is forced to delouse. The threat that sea lice pose to wild fish is accepted at the highest level of Norwegian government.

Jorn Krog: Yes, that’s undoubtedly true - they have been and can be a reservoir for sea lice, and sea lice can be transferred to wild salmon and make a threat to the wild stocks, that is notr being discussed; the challenge to us is how to reduce that problem or how to solve it.

20.50 The Norwegian solution of open government and strong regulation seems to be working. New research shows that levels of sealice infection are falling among both farmed and wild fish. But the spread of parasites is only one of the problems facing aquaculture. Vets like Solveig are discovering that many fish in the cages suffer the consequences of industrial husbandry.

Cataract, causing blindness, is just one of many health problems resulting from ever-more intensive production. The objective is always to bring the fish to market weight in the shortest possible time. In just a few years, their growth rate has been massively increased.

Reid Hole: The better they are growing the better is the welfare of them and we will also see that with good growth you will have a healthy fish because what we should keep in mind is when they are growing well they get well balanced feed and that has a direct impact also on the health status so they are better protected against diseases.

21.57 To achieve their results, aquaculturists manipulate everything: feeding regimes, temperature, light levels and genetic selection. But as a result, do the salmon suffer stress?

23.57 Trygve Poppe: There is no doubt that salmon are sophisticated animals and there is big gaps in our knowledge about for example their pain perception. We don’t know very much there.

JULIAN ‘How do you know that farmed salmon are suffering stress I mean what are the signs and symptoms?

Poppe: Well I think we have seen it in recent years. In diseases that we call productional diseases, that is kind of man made diseases. Made through the way we handle these fish and the way we farm them.

JULIAN: Diseases that we’re talking about these are mainly bacterial and viral diseases are they?

POPPE. There are some bacterial some viral and some parasitilogical diseases yes. Cataract is very common

JULIAN: You mean the fish are blind?

POPPE: The fish are more or less blind, exactly.

JULIAN: And you think these diseases are the direct result of intensification ?

POPPE: Well we see the diseases in wild fish as well but never to such an extent and such seriousness as in farming conditions. The farming condition caters in a way for infectious disease to occur. ou have lots of fish in a very concentrated area.

JULIAN: What about the fish we have got here.

POPPE: Well these are supposed to be Atlantic salmon but as you see they look maybe more like carp or something. But these are ordinary farmed Atlantic salmon with a condition we call humpback and we believe that high temperature during incubation of the egg cell is an important factor in producing these fish and of course the fish farmer will increase the temperature to speed up the development from egg to smolts.

JULIAN What percentage of fish might you find with these kind of gross malformations?

POPPE Well this malformation has become very common in Norway in recent years and we have seen that in fifty, sixty, seventy percent in some cases but 20 percent is fairly ordinary.

JULIAN You’re saying up to seventy percent of the fish?

POPPE yes these fish are from a particular farm where at the present time seventy percent of the fish have different types of back formations.

JULIAN Can the salmon be pushed any further

POPPE The farmers they need to make money because this tough competition world wide competition so we are definitely pressing the fish. In a way a way we are not considering them as biological individuals. These are more like names or cars or whatever.

JULIAN You mean they are being treated more like goods on a production line.

POPPE These are definitely goods on a production line, yes.

24.55 Not all salmon farm produce monsters. As always, the worst cases cast a shadow over the rest. But industry leaders do recognise a problem and put it down to inexperience.

Reid Hole: Due to the fact that that this is a new industry and we are learning through research every day new things we can come into things like this but this is not some thing that we want.’

25.19

The young industry has had many unwanted experiences. From the beginning, it's been devastated by disease - furunculosis, bacterial kidney disease, vibriosis and, most recently, I.S.A. (infectious salmon anaemia) have all caused series losses, in some years accounting for half of the fish in the cages. Although these epidemics have now been largely contained, millions of fish died or had to be slaughtered; and it is very likely that new diseases will appear

Julian. Is this is this ethical?

POPPE: As a veterinarian I really dislike the way these salmon look and I dislike the fact that we are actually producing these fish. They really deserve better. But again we don’t have tradition for fish as farm animals and the animal welfare act is kind of insufficient when it comes to dealing with modern fish farming.’

26.16 Other legislation may also be insufficient. In the pristine waters of Scottish lochs, this build-up of fish wastes, of faeces and uneaten food beneath salmon cages is not only offensive, it can cause major ecological damage. Nor does it do much good for the fish in the cages above. As a result, fish farmers now practice "fallowing". They leave the cages empty, or fallow, once the mature fish have been harvested.

26.52 As part of the huge Nutreco group, Marine Harvest Scotland is regarded as an industry leader, using the most up-to-date farming techniques. I visited one of its farms where it’s claimed that the regular practise of 'fallowing', allows waste materials to be dispersed by currents and tides. This, says managing director Graeme Dear, helps safeguard the health of the fish.

Graeme Dear About just over 5 kilos, we can see there is hardly a mark on them, they are in very good condition. We have never denied, I mean the cages that we see before us they have an impact the impact is underneath the cages, and its the same in any walk of life you build a house you change whatever it is a farmer ploughs a field you change whatever it is and we have an impact. The good thing is that it is an organic impact which can regenerate it can return to its normal state that is why I would like to see a system which would allow us on a routine basis to move the cages from the present location just up the loch and that area would regenerate. I don’t think we have anything to fear.

28.10 Here on the East Coast of Canada, at a site where water flow is more restricted scientists there’s a long term study to find the impact of salmon farms on the sea bed. Fish farms in Limekiln Bay produce a half million kilos of salmon a year, with the resulting deposits of faeces and waste food. Dr. Gerhard Pohl studied the rate of dispersal of the waste and what changes occurred.

We looked particularly at the animals that live on the bottom. They are very diverse there are many different kinds but mostly because they don’t move away they have to stay within the area they have to face the conditions where ever they are. Basically we took samples from the bottom of the sea. We did this once a year over 5 years in the middle of the bay. We did this to minimise the effects of any particular cage on samples. So we think what we measured here were the impacts for the region as a whole rather than a particular cage site. We found 50-60 different kinds of species we found a dozen less the next year but isn’t just the species themselves it is the whole community structure changes. Those different species that disappear from 94f-95 have not re-appeared again. This indicates that it takes a very long time for them to be able to recover.

This seems to indicate that it takes a rather long time for the animals to be able to recover.

These crustaceans, these anthropods and cumaceans have drastically reduced in abundance. The analogy is a bit like a house of cards once you start taking cards away at one point the whole house will fall. But I think at this point we are raising a warning flag that this happening and if we don’t stop it we really do not know what the more dramatic consequences will be so we must be very careful what we do from here on in.

30.06 And already the bay has lost 23 species, more than one third of the total identified since the first sampling.

30.21 This spectacular run of sockeye salmon tells us that we’ve crossed North America from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean where the sockeye is one of six species of native Pacific salmon. Here too all species are in steep decline; and one of the latest dangers they face comes from imported Atlantic salmon escaping from fish farms and aggressively competing with of native stocks.

30.49 In British Columbia, on the Eastern side of Vancouver Island, is the salmon capital of the world - that’s the claim - not because of the numerous fish farms, but because in this area the greatest tonnage of wild Pacific salmon; Chum, chinook, Coho, sockeye and Pink was once caught. Over recent years, as catches collapsed, many fisheries were closed. Luckily on the day of our arrival, there was frenzied activity because a pink salmon fishery had been opened for a couple of days.

When our float plane landed near one of the fishing boats, we found to our amazement that most of the catch was not native pink salmon but alien Atlantic’s - not one or two of them, but hundreds.

The rest of the fleet was also catching them in thousands, according to messages reaching skipper Calvin Siidar.

Calvin Siidar: They are another predator fish out here that shouldn’t be here. If there are tens of thousands of them that is hundreds of tons. It’s well documented around the world what the problems of fish farming is and this is one of them, escaping into the wild. Well there is that one there with no nose nobody knows why that is.

These fish did not come out did not all come out of the same pens you see when they raise them to market size they are all the same size they are all the same size so these fish are either from two different farms or at least two different pens.

Julian Pettifer: What do think is the ultimate danger of this?

Calvin Siidar: The total devastation of our wild stocks. Our wild stocks here in BC could feed the world if it was treated properly if we had salmon enhancement and good conservation and saving the habitat, stuff like that. We could feed the world with that. But as far as I am concerned this pollution.

I’m not anti-fish farm I understand a realise that it is an integral part of our economy in BC but I am anti irresponsibility .

Julian Pettifer: And you reckon at the moment it is irresponsible?

Calvin Siidar: Absolute irresponsibility to have these swimming in the wild. As far as rules and regulations are concerned the fish farming industry has virtually had carte blanche in BC in the last 15 years they’ve gotten away with anything they pretty well wanted to. They’ve released diseased fish , they are killing seals and sea lions all over the place its like the wild west kind of attitude. They could not care less about the environment around them, its all the all mighty dollar.

33.36 Once the news got out that the fleet was hauling in Atlantics, one farm admitted to the escape of three thousand salmon; then another to 30,000.

33:48 And Willie Macintosh knows all about escaped salmon. (PAUSE) On the West Coast of Scotland, farmed salmon also turn up in nets and at the end of a line. In some rivers, where wild salmon are extinct, the only salmon now caught are escapees. Though farmers try to minimise the loss of their valuable fish, escapes continue. Net cages are damaged by storms and by predators; but escapes are also due to incompetence. How many escaped fish survive in the wild is guess work, but half Willie Macintosh’s catch are escapees, and since he’s the only netsman on the coast, there must be a considerable number that don’t finish up in boxes.

34.34 In this Norwegian river, escaped salmon mingle with wild fish, the former easily identifiable by their damaged tails and fins, frayed with contact with the cages. In some of Norway’s traditional salmon rivers farmed salmon now outnumber wild breeders by 3 or 4 to one. Every river has its own race of wild salmon with a distinct genetic identity, but inter-breeding with farmed fish will destroy this uniqueness.

That is one conclusion reached by Dr. Ian Fleming and his team. In a large scale experiment, they tagged mature farmed and wild salmon and studied their interaction when they were released into this Norwegian river. All other salmon were excluded. It was quickly established that the wild and domesticated fish are inter-breeding.

Julian: It’s often said, what’s the problem, there’s always been genetic mixing of salmon in rivers; does it really matter?

Ian Fleming: That’s a good question, and the answer is yes, it matters quite a bit. I don’t think it would be the end of salmon; we would have a new type of salmon certainly, like a feral dog rather than the wolf that we have in our environment

Basically we are going to have fish all looking the same they are going to be based on farmed fish, the farmed fish will come in and interbred up and down the coast of Norway, throughout Scotland and Ireland and over into Canada, that is a concern, that we would basically end up with one form of fish in the end.

36.09 If that’s the bad news, this is the nightmare: GM salmon. Aquaculturalists say that as long as the public don’t want transgenics, they won’t raise them. Yet they are a brilliant discovery; according to Dr Garth Fletcher who created them by stitching a gene from an ocean Pout to a salmon growth hormone gene. His demonstration of their potential was impressive.

Garth Fletcher: These are two fish exactly the same age they’re siblings. Ones a transgenic and one’s a standard-size salmon, from the same family and one as you can see is several fold bigger than the other - at least twice as big as the other one. They grew up in the same environment, fed the same food. Everything is the same except one grows faster than the other one does. It’s fantastic really.

36.56 Fantastic yes! The rate of growth that’s spectacular in adult fish is truly fantastic in the young transgenic salmon;. The small dark fish in this tank started life at the same moment as their large silvery transgenic siblings. At this stage they are growing five times faster.

Julian Pettifer: Let’s talk about the environmental questions. The idea that these fish could be grown in sea pens. The big problem of escapes is the one that has really worried people . How could you put their minds at rest?

Garth Fletcher: They should be sterile, I think all farmed salon should be sterile. In other words they are incapable of reproduction so in this way you can’t get cross hybridisation with the wild stocks at all. And I have to say from the point of view of a . This is a no brainer. You want the fish to be sterile so that nobody else can take the technology and use it for themselves .

Once we go through the regulatory process of getting approval for the various aspects of this product we will have to prove that they are all sterile.

Julian Pettifer: Have you been surprised at the press that you have been getting, I mean Frankenstein’s monsters fish. Has that surprised you?

Garth Fletcher: What’s wrong with Frankenstein I don’t get it. You can say that the press consider me to be a clone of Doctor Frankenstein if you wish. I don’t have a problem with this.

The problem is the reality to people. Is it safe to eat and is it going to cause any more of an environmental problem than aquaculture does today.

Julian Pettifer: Looking down the road. 20 years from now, shall we all be eating genetically modified salmon?

Garth Fletcher: I think it’s your choice; twenty years that’s probably a reasonable time to say its possible that many of the growers have taken on these technologies because they see they can reduce the price of fish even further than it is today. I mean lets take our competition’s chicken. You’re talking six weeks to a chicken it shows up on the market place; six weeks from an egg. Salmon - two to three years - that’s slow.

Julian PTC Like all other intensively produced livestock farmed salmon grow bigger and faster because of the way they’re reared and fed. And since remember they are carnivorous fish, the food pellets that rain down on those pens are made from other fish - wild fish. The factory farming of salmon is sustained by the industrial fishing of the oceans.

39.25 Of all the 95 million tonnes of fish trawled world-wide, about one third is not for human consumption, but to make fish oil or fish meal for livestock. In the Atlantic, sand eels and, capelin are two of the target species. More than 30 % of all fish meal and 50% of fish oil is destined for aquaculture, much of it to feed salmon. The rest goes to poultry and pigs. It is often argued that harvesting these fish to feed other fish is wasteful and unsustainable. Between 3 and 5 kilos of wild fish are used to produce one kilo of salmon.

But it’s undeniable that the fatty acids in that salmon are good for us. It’s one of its strongest selling points.

Reid Hole: The special thing with Atlantic salmon is basically that it is a product known by the consumer as a well documented safe and healthy product, and I think there is more and more concern today about human health, and from that perspective the Atlantic salmon contributed to improve the health status of the consumer you can look at cardiovascular diseases, it is proven to have an effect on that, it has a reduction on cholesterol level in the blood, and it in general strengthening the immune system.

40.53 But there is a downside. Many of the fish species that go into a salmon’s diet contain contaminants known as persistent organic pollutants. They’re from industrial wastes and pesticides; and even though the manufacture of these chemicals has been curtailed, large residues survive in the environment, ending up in the ocean and in the food chain. Unfortunately, the harvesting of fish from the ocean to feed farmed salmon is bringing these toxins back to whence they came. Back to us - according to a scientist funded by GreenPeace, Dr Paul Johnston.

Dr Paul Johnston: They were a group of chemicals that were very very widely used and have been very very widely released into the environment. The problem with these particular group of chemicals is that they are very persistent, they don’t break down in the environment to any significant degree they are very bio-accumalative and build up in the fatty tissues in the body obviously they are toxic and if you build up enough of them and there is some argument as to what enough of them is, but there will be toxicological problems associated with that.

42.02 These farmed salmon just slaughtered at a processing plant, have been raised on feed produced by one of a handful of large companies, all buying their fish meal and fish oil from a limited number of sources around the world; But scientists are finding surprisingly high levels of contaminants in the feed including pesticides, organochlorines such as polychlorinated biphenyls, and flame retardants known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers.

Testing for these pollutants is complex and expensive. Dr Michael Easton recently carried out a pilot study for Canada’s David Suzuki Foundation. He analysed four types of fish feed; four farmed salmon from different sources and four wild Pacific salmon. Though the sample is small it seems to confirm that contamination in farmed fish comes from the feed.

Dr Michael Easton: The results were very very clear. Farmed fish and the feed that they were fed appeared to have a much higher level of contamination with respect to PCBs, organochlorine pesticides and polybrominated diphenyl ethers than did wild fish, in fact it was extremely noticeable the difference.

It is a function of how the feed is made, of their concentrating of these different materials to produced high protein diets for the fish and ultimately the contaminants apparently get concentrated as well.

43.35 Disturbingly high levels of flame-retardants were found as well as much higher levels of PCBs in the farmed fish compared with wild Pacific fish. However in this country, wild Salmon may be equally contaminated with compounds known to affect the nervous system.

Julian Pettifer: PCBs to put it bluntly, are a neural poison.

Michael Easton: They’re a neural toxin. Not only are they neural toxic, which causes learning disabilities but they are also immuno toxic. They cause depression of the immune system that enables you to catch colds and flus and infections much more easily than normal; and they also aid the production of cancer.

44.25 These toxins are not only found in fish, they are now present in minute amounts in virtually all food, but levels are many times greater in what are called oily fishes including farmed salmon than in most other food stuffs. Since consumption of farmed salmon has increased three-fold in recent years, frequent consumers could be acquiring most of their toxin intake from this source alone. A single portion of salmon is virtually harmless but regular consumption over time leads to an accumulation of contaminants; and the concentration is exaggerated in those with low body weight.

Children are considered to be vulnerable even to background levels of toxins; and research is now detecting subtle effects on the population as a whole.

Miriam Jacobs is a nutritionist who recently carried out a preliminary study which confirmed suspected high levels of PCBs and Dioxins in farmed salmon. Recent publication of her research produced a number of letters from parents worried about feeding farmed salmon to their children.

45.38 Miriam Jacobs: I am concerned about the dietary intake of small children infants yes. Their dietary intake will be far greater than for an adult based on body weight consumption ratio an ongoing study in Holland has been monitoring for background levels of PCBs in very young children and going through up to school age and its been found that there is a greater risk of infection and theirs a greater impairment of cognitive development in those children that have higher intakes of PCBs.

If I was considering pregnancy or breast feeding I would be concerned because all the fats bio-accumulate in breast milk. Breast milk levels of organo-chlorines and dioxins and PCBs are quite worrying. That does not mean that breast feeding should not continue, quite the reverse. Breast milk is still the best for your child but I would make every effort to make sure that my breast milk was as low as possible in those contaminants.

46.59 Miriam Jacobs’ conclusions can be seen in relation to World health organisation advice. Two years ago the WHO sharply reduced levels for the acceptable daily intake of dioxins and PCBs. This advice takes account of a growing body of research, including the Dutch studies. The European Union has followed suit revising guidelines to one tenth of earlier levels. The UK has yet to make a similar reduction.

47.28 Meanwhile, some products from fish farms arrive at the supermarkets stating on the package that health professionals recommend two or three portions of farmed salmon a week for the good of our health.

47.44 The UK Food Standards Agency’s website should surely provide clear guidance; that’s why the agency was set up in the wake of the BSE affair. But it’s anything but clear. 47.56 Paul Jonhnston I think the problem that I have with these sorts of data is really the fact that you have to dig to get the whole picture – snippets of information in one place, snippets of information in another, and assembling the whole picture is actually a quite tricky one.

Julian Pettifer But it is so contradictory because in this paragraph it tells you you should eat two portions of fish, one of which should be oily fish...

48.17 The website recommends we eat one portion of oily fish a week but says nothing about the consumption of more than one portion; or about young children and pregnant mothers

48.27 From the Food Standards Agency, established last year, we’re promised honest and independent guidance on the safety of everything we consume. Here, surely, we shall get comprehensive answers to our questions. Our interview, attended by a press officer, was given by Dr Nigel Harrison an expert in the Agency’s contaminants division.

48.49 Dr Nigel Harrison It is only necessary to eat one portion of oily fish and that will give you the full benefits with the associated reduction in heart disease without having any risk of exceeding the safety guidelines for chemicals that might be present in those fish.

Julian Pettifer So do you actually discount the evidence that even back ground levels of pcbs can produce learning difficulties in children and that they can produce immuno-deficiency problems as well.

49.22 Dr Nigel Harrison I am not discounting that evidence. What I am saying is that this evidence and other related evidence is under review at the moment by an expert advisory committee who will advise us whether we need to take any action as a result of studies such as that.

Dr Nigel Harrison Our advice is that it is important to eat at least one portion of oily fish per week. The benefits from eating that fish would outweigh any potential concern due to the chemicals that present in that fish. If we are looking at PCBs and dioxins any potential effects these might have are very long term and the consumption over a short period within any ones life time is relatively unimportant compared with their lifetime consumption.

50.18 Julian Pettifer Is the food standards agency happy with the idea of small children eating several portions of farmed salmon is that ok, as far as your concerned.

Dr Nigel Harrison As I say, what is important is having a balanced diet and within a balanced diet it is only necessary to eat one portion of oily fish .

Julian Pettifer Yes I know but you cannot

50.40 INTERRUPTION FROM FSA PRESS OFFICER ‘I am sorry

Julian Pettifer ‘I’m sorry just one minute ’

PRESS OFFICER ‘We really do have to go’

Julian Pettifer You cannot determine what a family is going to feed their children, they may be feeding more than one portion. Now is that therefore OK.

Dr Nigel Harrison ‘What they are doing (Pause)is its they need to follow a balance diet and if they consider that eating several portions of fish is a balanced diet well that is their particular choice. Our advice is and an expert committee advice is that it is only necessary to eat one portion of fish so it is only necessary to eat more than one portion.

51.17 Julian Pettifer We are not talking about what is necessary we are talking about what is desirable.

PRESS OFFICER (out of vision) ‘Thank you’ END OF INTERVIEW

51.25 And that was it. The press officer concluded the interview, leaving us with the assurance that one portion a week of farmed salmon is fine; and that any more is just a matter of personal choice.

Miriam Jacobs disagrees – at least with the assertion that the intake of toxins balances out over a lifetime.

51.45 Julian Pettifer What do you say to the argument that small children may be more vulnerable to these toxins with their low body weight but it evens out as they grow bigger and older.

51.58 Miriam Jacobs There are critical windows of development in the foetus and the infant and the young child. Those developmental windows are present for a very short space of time if those windows are perturbed that’s it for life. It can’t be regained later on.

52.20 And there is another cause for concern – an echo of the BSE affair. While filming at this processing plant, we learned that waste material like this, the salmon offal and off-cuts will end up as feed for other livestock.

52.34 Dr Paul Johnston: What we are doing is maximising human exposure to these chemicals through promoting what is essentially a highly artificial food chain. Not only are you taking food resources from the natural environment that are contaminated and concentrating them in the salmon but you are then but you are then taking the residues from these salmon and then taking them to other areas of livestock and ultimately of course all of these practices lead to products that are consumed by human beings.

53.06 Aquaculturalists are well aware of the problem of contaminants in the feed and they believe it is avoidable. They are devising simpler and cheaper ways of testing the salmon diet, even considering the removal of contaminants. But the more immediate solution must lie in trying to obtain fish meal and oil from uncontaminated sources. Nutreco claims to be attempting just that..

53.34 Reid Hole: We all know the effects of dioxins and PCBS on human health, so what we have in place is specific regulation quality assurance programme focusing on areas where there are low or no dioxin and PCB levels in the raw materials and we have monitoring systems in place also on a regular basis to analyse that what is delivered to our plant is within the limits we have. One of the major problems with these analyses is that there is limited capacity today in Europe and they are very time consuming.

54.12 Julian Pettifer: Could you put your hand on your heart and say you can eat as much farmed salmon as you like, and it won’t harm you, in fact it will be good for you.

Reid Hole: It will be good for you, to eat salmon.

54.23 Dr Paul Johnston: I don’t eat it myself, and I think that as things stand I will continue to be one of those people who does not eat farmed salmon.

54.40 Aquaculture is here to stay; but it must surely be done better. The industry is taking steps to control escapes and disease, and to reduce environmental damage. But contaminants cast a shadow and so does over-production. Here at Loch Ewe, in response to pressure from the public, the authorities have demanded a reduction in output. There are signs that regulation is becoming tougher and that saving the environment is a consideration as well as the provision of jobs and the making of profits.

55.20 Julian PTC As aquaculturalists are keen to point out there’s is a young industry still finding its way. Even so, it seems that little has been learned from other, older intensive farming systems, the same mistakes have been made with the emphasis always on greater and greater productivity achieved with little regard for the welfare of the creatures being farmed. There has also been a lack of candour of honest discussion about the impact on wild fish populations and on the wider environment . Once again the familiar and dangerous assumption that we can always have mastery over nature is producing uncomfortable consequences and even risks for human health. When you next by farmed salmon at an attractive price ponder for a moment on the real cost of that fish.

James Butler: Well what we’ve got here is mature brown trout, there’s been no salmon and one sea trout, so what that means is that there’ll be no salmon spawning here at all and that’s despite the fact that 700 hundred smolts went to sea last year so we expected some of them back and if that happens again next year and the year after then we are certainly looking at an extinction scenario. The fact is exactly the same as is happening in other rivers as the same size in this area so its not particularly surprising but from a personal point of view its pretty depressing because there is nothing we can do about it.

At Willie Macintosh’s netting station, catches continue to dwindle. His total haul this time is two salmon. The larger is an escaped farmed fish and the smaller, a grilse, a wild salmon that has been one year at sea. To the practised eye, the two are totally different. The farmed fish could never be mistaken for its wild relative.

Julian Pettifer: What are you going to do with these fish then?

Willie Macintosh: Well the farmed fish we will probably feed to the dog; and this one, you’re looking at the last grilse I’ll ever catch at Red Point; I’ll probably get it stuffed.

Julian Pettifer: Are you serious about that?

Willie Macintosh: Totally serious.

Julian Pettifer: So you’re giving up fishing.

Willie Macintosh: That was my total catch of the day

Julian Pettifer: So that, as far as you’re concerned, the last fish.

Willie Macintosh: The last fish that I will catch legally at Red Point in a bag net. And this is the last station that has kept going on the West Coast.

Julian Pettifer: That’s sad.

Willie Macintosh: That’s life. And there’s no one to blame but the politicians for letting people interfere with nature. That’s all it comes down to. Nothing else. Interfering with nature.

FIN

Full script of the BBC documentary