Green Britain Foundation is calling on Princess Anne to cancel her visit to Bakkafrost's Applecross salmon farming site — the deadliest factory farm in Britain, where more than 10 million salmon have died in five years and a quarter of all reported Scottish salmon deaths in the last two years occurred.
The Green Britain Foundation has called on Princess Anne to cancel her visit to Bakkafrost’s Applecross salmon farming site on 13 May, warning the Royal Family should not be used to give respectability to the worst mortality site in British farming.
Official industry mortality figures analysed by the Green Britain Foundation show that more than 10 million salmon have died at Applecross in the last five years, making it the worst performing salmon farming site for mortalities in Scotland and Britain’s deadliest factory farm. In the last two years, more than a quarter of all reported salmon deaths on Scottish salmon farms occurred at Applecross. Because the salmon farming industry does not report culls in the same way, the actual number of dead animals linked to the site is likely to be far higher.
Dale Vince OBE, founder of the Green Britain Foundation, said:
“Princess Anne would not be seen dead in a factory farm for chickens, I assume - with it’s routine animal cruelty and total lack of space and light and any semblance of a natural existence - where death and suffering are traded happily for lower costs. Salmon farming is no different, in fact rates of mortality are far higher. Factory farming is animal cruelty and environment degradation - why on earth should that have a royal endorsement?
Bakkafrost wants the photo opp, the handshake. It wants to use Princess Anne to ‘Royal wash’ their cruel, dirty business.
The King was right to drop the Royal Warrant from Mowi, another factory farm operation abusing both captive and wild fish in Scotland.
Princess Anne should cancel this visit. No royal handshake. No staged photographs. No Palace gloss for this hideously cruel and dirty factory farm for salmon”
Bakkafrost is a Faroese-owned salmon farming company. Its Applecross site is an intensive salmon farming operation. It is part of an industry that keeps fish in crowded systems, treats mass death as a business cost and then sells the survivors as premium food.
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Read MoreBen Hadfield, managing director of Mowi Scotland, sat down with The Last Salmon to answer for the world's biggest salmon farmer. He spent the time aggrieved at activists, at the King's "misinformed" advisers, at the weather. And when the death rate was put to him, he didn't deny it. He called it biology. The toll behind that word: more than 3 million animals lost in Mowi's care last year alone, and a royal warrant stripped because of what we filmed.
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