Information held relating to rainbow trout farms operated on Loch Etive: EIR release

Information requested

All information held by yourselves [communication directed to the Scottish Government’s Fish Health Inspectorate] concerning the rainbow trout farms operated on Loch Etive by Dawnfresh, such information to cover the period January 2021 to the present day’. Further, it was stipulated that you anticipated that ‘such information should address the raised sea lice and mortality events that have occurred on Loch Etive this summer, and will also include all Fish Health Inspectorate reports of inspections etc., not yet published online.

Your request was subsequently clarified on 6 October 2021 and you agreed upon a revision of the request ‘all information held by Marine Scotland’s FHI in relation to sea lice and mortality events concerning the Dawnfresh Loch Etive sites from 01/01/2021 to the date of your request, to include any unpublished FHI reports of inspections’.

This is a small modification but has facilitated in confirming our interpretation of this request in that it only relates to information concerning the FHI and sea lice and mortality events concerning the Loch Etive sites operated by Dawnfresh.

Response

Attached is a copy of most of the information requested.

Some of the information held, which is relevant to your request, is publicly available from a number of resources including:

• Scotland’s Aquaculture website – in the case of published sea lice data: http://aquaculture.scotland.gov.uk/
• The Scottish Government website with respect to published mortality event data and completed case information: https://www.gov.scot/collections/publication-of-fish-health-inspectorate-information/

Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of the information requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. 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. In this case the redaction of individual’s names, telephone numbers, job titles and signatures has been applied.

I should also inform you that in some situations there may be reference to information which has been redacted in full as it is information which is out with the scope of your request – for example some of the email communications refer to specific mortality events by unique number, where copies of the same are not present it is because they do not relate to the Loch Etive sites operated by Dawnfresh.

In addition, an incomplete FHI case sheet (case 2021-0355) is released as part of the response to the request. As a result, this information may change slightly or be added to, but on completion will be published on the Scottish Government website as detailed above.

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.

FOI202100244449 - Information released 1

File type

34 page PDF

File size

3.5 MB

FOI202100244449 - Information released 2

File type

137 page PDF

File size

2.5 MB