Mortality within fish being transported for 2017 harvest: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/17/03014
Date received: 13 December 2017
Date responded: 17 January 2018

Information requested

Information on 'mortality within fish being transported for harvest during 2017'. Your request made specific reference to 'other correspondence' with Marine Harvest and other companies/parties concerning this subject area and followed on from a reply issued to you on 13 December 2017 in response to a previous request - FoI/17/02772.

Response

As the information you have requested is 'environmental information' for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the 'public interest test'. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

Please find enclosed a copy of the information requested. This includes copies of ministerial correspondence with a third party in relation to previous communications with Marine Harvest (released to you through FoI/17/0772).

You may also find some additional information through Marine Scotland's Fish Health Inspectorate's active publication plan. This involves the publication of case information relating to aquatic animal health surveillance in Scotland. Information is published on a quarterly basis, three months in arrears:

http://www.gov.scot/Topics/marine/Fish-Shellfish/FHI/CaseInformation Responses to other requests for information are published on the Scottish Government website and these may contain further information which is useful to your request: /publications/

Please be aware that Marine Scotland does not hold a comprehensive data set of mortalities within fish being transported, in Scotland, for harvest.

You will note that a small amount of information has been redacted from that supplied. An exception under Regulation 11(2) (personal data) of the EIRs applies to that information.

The reasons why the exception applies are explained below.

Reasons for not providing information

An exception applies.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to a small amount of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Schedule 1 to the Data Protection Act 1998. Personal information relating to a junior member of staff within Scottish Government has also been redacted in this case. This exception is not subject to the 'public interest test', so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at http://www.gov.scot/foi-responses

FoI-17-03014 - Information provided.pdf

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8 page PDF

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185.0 kB