Wild trout are ballooning on waste from a salmon farm the Soil Association calls organic. It's time to stop calling factory farming organic.
The Soil Association says this salmon farm is organic. The wild trout living next to it tell a different story.
At the Loch of Cliff on Unst, Britain's most northerly inhabited island, Cooke Aquaculture keeps young salmon in net cages in a wild loch. Wild brown trout gorge on what comes out of them. Trout of up to 20lb have been reported. A normal loch trout weighs under a pound.
Dale Vince, founder of the Green Britain Foundation, said:
"These monster wild trout grow to a size nature never intended. They are Franken-trout gorging on what pours out of the cages. You can't drop a factory farm into a wild loch and pretend you have control of where the feed and the faeces go. Nature is being affected."
This is not a quirk of nature. Even the Scottish Government admits wild trout grow bigger on uneaten salmon pellets. The giant trout then eat smaller fish and upset the balance of the loch.
The water is suffering too. The loch has had toxic algae blooms four summers in a row. Warning signs at the loch now tell people not to drink the water, not to eat fish from it and not to fish there at all. Yet this is where Cooke raises its "organic" salmon.
None of this has stopped the farm being certified organic. Its fish still go to Waitrose and M&S.
It is the same story wherever the salmon industry goes. Wild fish, wildlife and clean water pay the price.
There is no such thing as organic factory farming. We are calling on the Soil Association to stop certifying farmed salmon as organic.
If you shop at Waitrose or M&S, ask them why they sell salmon from farms like this.
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