'Real progress will not come from another committee hearing ... it will come from a deliberate cultural reset'

Drawing on experience working across regulatory delivery and reform, environmental governance and rural sectors, former Scottish Environment Protection Agency official and aquaculture sector executive Anne Anderson has written a series of five articles exploring why some of the most contested debates around salmon farming remain unresolved despite extensive evidence and policy intent. Ahead of the May 7 election that will decide who controls the next Scottish Government, she argues that progress now depends less on revisiting familiar arguments and more on aligning legislation, regulation, and sector relationships so that environmental responsibility and rural economic resilience can be delivered together.

Scotland’s salmon debate is circling the drain - it’s time to leave the old room behind

As the last Scottish Parliament entered its final legislative sprint, the Rural Affairs and Islands (RAI) Committee’s February–March 2026 hearings on salmon farming should have signalled a fresh start. Instead, they felt uncomfortably familiar, a re-run of conversations Scotland has now been having for nearly a decade.

The Committee itself highlighted this stagnation in its January 2025 follow‑up report, which criticised slow progress on fish health, regulatory coordination, environmental performance, and implementation of long‑standing recommendations. Sitting through the 2026 hearings, the déjà vu was unmistakable: the questions sounded the same, the answers sounded the same, and the systemic problems identified one year earlier remained visibly unresolved.

The reason why this keeps happening isn’t a mystery. The 2022 independent review by regulatory expert Professor Russel Griggs identified the core structural barrier years ago: a fractured and mistrustful regulatory culture, with government, regulators, industry, and campaigners entering the room already assuming conflict rather than shared purpose.

A pattern of defensiveness

Having worked across both public and private sectors, including appearing before parliamentary committees in regulatory and industry roles, I recognise the pattern. The tone of a room can shape the trajectory of an entire conversation. When stakeholders arrive expecting to defend rather than collaborate, dialogue narrows immediately. In Scotland’s case, the issue isn’t a lack of knowledge so much as a lack of alignment.

What makes this more frustrating is that many of the solutions the Committee discussed, especially around mortality reduction, are not controversial. On relocation from older, low‑energy sites to more dynamic, well‑flushed waters, the scientific consensus is reasonably clear. Research from Norway and other major producers shows that higher‑energy locations generally support healthier fish, lower parasite pressure, and improved benthic conditions.

And yet Scotland’s ability to relocate farms remains extremely limited. Regulation has not kept pace with the environmental realities of legacy sites, leaving producers constrained in places where conditions have changed dramatically over time. SEPA’s own regulatory framework highlights these constraints within the current permitting system and the layering of organisational responsibilities.

The consequences are real and they’re widely shared:

• Producers feel stuck - unable to modernise sites or adopt best‑available evidence.
• Regulators feel overwhelmed - managing a complex and sometimes contradictory set of duties.
• Communities feel fatigued - witnessing repetitive debates but little visible progress.
• Environmental stakeholders feel unheard - concerned that risks are mounting but solutions remain slow.

Overly procedural

None of these frustrations is hard to understand. All arise from a regulatory culture that has become risk‑averse, defensive, and overly procedural.

Real progress will not come from another committee hearing or another round of policy restatements. It will come from a deliberate cultural reset, a genuine commitment by all parties to engage differently.

That means:

• Government entering the room with clear, timely, and deliverable regulatory pathways
• Regulators acting consistently and transparently
• Industry being open about challenges as well as achievements
• Environmental groups acknowledging where evidence has evolved
• Committees incentivising shared solutions, not performative conflict

Scotland’s salmon sector is too important – socially, economically, and environmentally – to remain trapped in a recursive debate loop. Rural communities, supply chain businesses, and emerging blue‑economy innovation all depend on a system capable of more than annual frustration.

It’s time to leave the old room behind and build a new one with clearer expectations, different behaviours, and a renewed sense of collective purpose. The current room isn’t just unproductive. It’s holding Scotland back.

Tomorrow: Scotland cannot break out of its repetitive salmon debate without first understanding the deeper system that keeps it stuck. That system changed fundamentally with the Natural Environment (Scotland) Act 2026 – a reform that quietly reset the entire governance landscape. To understand what Scotland’s next Parliament can realistically achieve, we first need to understand how that Act now shapes every environmental decision, every regulatory expectation, and every sector: from aquaculture to agriculture to planning. That is the focus of the next article.