It is difficult to argue against an industry which not only gives employment in areas where jobs are scarce, but which also reduces the price to the consumer of a product which is nourishing and which, up to recently, had often been beyond his or her resources. But the raising of this product under new conditions may cause havoc to the same creatures growing in the wild and, say some pessimists, wipe out the original through disease. This is the old fish-farming argument again, this time raised over conditions in Scotland. The river Shieldaig in north-west Scotland is the scene of a 10-year experiment, the first report of which confirms that migratory fish are verging on extinction on this system. Yet conditions in the water are pronounced well suited for fish to run into. The next stage is to tag smolts going to sea, and count their survivors to verify the danger scientifically. After that, the programme will move closer to the problem and study the numerous salmon farms on the loch into which the river runs, their sea lice and the omnipresence of common seals.
The background to the whole, writes Michael Wiggin in the Field, is "rampaging Infectious salmon anaemia", emanating, according to him, in fish farms and transmitted in sea water. Then, too, there is the demand from the salmon-farm industry - now that the sealochs they inhabit are diseased - for a looser regulatory framework to allow them into fresh locations. In the meantime, Wiggin awaits the failure of the smolts to return before some new move is made. To return or not, it should be said. Last Saturday's Irish Times reported a conference sponsored by the European Parliament's Green Group. It heard from Dr Malcolm Windsor of the North Atlantic Salmon Conservation Association that farmed salmon are escaping from their cages and interbreeding with wild stocks. In some rivers as many as 90 per cent of salmon were of farmed origin. As farmed salmon grew faster, wild salmon were likely to be displaced. What that would mean, the average citizen would not know, but surely some official could tell us.
Bord Iascaigh Mhara's Mr Donal Maguire said expansion of fish farming would be tightly controlled and closely monitored. Ms Patricia McKenna, MEP, criticised the Irish salmon growers for not attending and worried about the industry's impact on water quality and the sea floor and about its use of chemicals. Meanwhile, are we as strict about labelling wild and farmed salmon as we might be? Ask in your shop.