Recommendations on fish health

The Renewed Strategic Framework for Scottish Aquaculture set out a number of desired outcomes designed to safeguard and improve the health status of the Scottish aquaculture industry. The Healthier Fish Working Group was tasked with providing recommendations to deliver those outcomes

The group and its sub-groups met on a number of occasions last autumn and this spring, supplemented by a series of discussion meetings with the aquaculture industry in Shetland, Orkney, Oban, Ullapool and Stornoway.

The Group recommends that the Scottish Government should require that all operators in the marine environment enter into Farm Management Agreements. Moreover, it suggests that the Scottish Government should work with the SSPO to put on a legal footing the independent arbitration process being established by the SSPO, ensuring that such a system is fair to all finfish producers. 

Other recommendations include new reporting requirements to Marine Scotland be introduced and that the Fish Health Inspectorate (FHI) should supplement its current announced inspections with some un-announced visits to fish farms.