Scottish Sea Farms fish health and mortality: EIR release

FOI reference: FOI/17/03031
Date received: 14 December 2017
Date responded: 18 January 2018

Information requested

You asked for information on 'mortalities and diseases at salmon farms operated by Scottish Sea Farms during 2017'.

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 (Annex A). This includes details of reports of mortality from salmon farms operated by Scottish Sea Farms during 2017.

You will 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:

Marine Scotland's Fish Health Inspectorate

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:

SG Publications

Please be aware that Marine Scotland does not hold a comprehensive data set of mortalities and diseases across salmon farms farms operated within Scotland.

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-17-03031-Annex A-Mortality Events.xlsx

File type

Excel document

File size

119.2 kB