Scotland's environment watchdog has finally handed a file on dead salmon buried on North Uist to prosecutors. It took more than two years after we exposed it.
Scotland's environment watchdog has finally sent a file to prosecutors over dead farmed salmon dumped in the ground on North Uist.
It comes more than two years after our undercover footage caught the burial on camera.
Dale Vince, founder of the Green Britain Foundation, said:
"SEPA says this took 'longer than would have been preferred'. We feel the same. Two years just to send a report to prosecutors. Nature can't afford a regulator that is so spectacularly ineffective."
SEPA has now confirmed to the Green Britain Foundation that the case has gone to the Procurator Fiscal. The Crown Office says it has received the report.
The footage, filmed at Whiteshore Cockles in Paible in May 2024, showed dead fish from Scotland's salmon farms being buried.
The firm had told SEPA it stopped burying dead fish on 31 January 2024. Our footage was filmed four months later.
SEPA had witness statements in hand by January 2025. Its bosses met to decide on action in June 2025. Yet the file has only now reached prosecutors.
Green MSP Ariane Burgess told The Times the footage was "really shocking". She said: "There can be no place for the kind of practices that are being alleged."
The firm first promised a plant to process its dead fish would be running by June 2015. It has since given dates in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2023.
Polluters can be fined up to £40,000 and jailed for six months in a sheriff court. For the most serious environmental crimes fines are unlimited and jail terms can run to five years.
It is now for the Procurator Fiscal to decide whether to prosecute. We will keep up the pressure until this case is dealt with.
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