Salmon in a pen. Mowi has been fined £67,000 for taking insufficient care in removing fish from a site in Norway after ISA was identified.

Mowi fined for insufficient care in clearing ISA site

The world’s biggest salmon farmer, Mowi, has been fined NOK 800,000 (£67,000) after it was deemed to be insufficiently careful when emptying a site in Norway where fish had been found to have infectious salmon anaemia (ISA).

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The fine was issued by the Troms chief of police after notification from the Directorate of Fisheries and the Norwegian Food Safety Authority.

In a statement on its website, the Directorate said the background for the report was an incident in connection with the emptying of locality Storvika V in Dyrøy municipality. On 16 April 2020, the Norwegian Food Safety Authority made a decision to empty the site by 1 June 2020 as a result of ISA being detected there.

In May 2020, an employee cut a hole in the bottom of a seine bag and released a small number of dead fish into the sea. There were also no risk assessments, procedures and training that provided sufficient guidance for emptying cages during site closures when there was a risk of spreading infectious animal disease. Mowi has accepted the fine.