SQS React To TV Programme's "Scaremongering" – Fishupdate.com

SCOTTISH Quality Salmon has claimed that “shoddy journalism and bad science” were to blame for the bad representation of salmon farming on an episode of Tonight with Trevor McDonald, screened last month.

The programme, broadcast by ITV on 28 June, included a segment on salmon farming as part of a longer programme criticising the Food Standards Agency.

Amongst the claims it made were that the colour of farmed salmon could be picked using a chart “like one of those paint charts you use when choosing the colour of your bathroom” and that the use of toxic chemicals in salmon farms was “commonplace”. SQS labeled this as “simply not true”.

Don Staniford and Anthony Worral-Thompson were presented as experts in the programme but SQS argue that the former is well recognized as Scotland’s most active anti—aquaculture campaigner and that the latter has recently fronted a promotional campaign for wild salmon.

SQS also added that the claim made that an array of chemicals can be found in the flesh of farmed salmon and that these have consumer effects, as well as environmental effects, was “scaremongering at its worst”.

The statement concludes by saying: “There are three possible explanations for this broadcast. Tonight may have been duped by anti-salmon farming campaigners or simply failed to research its subject properly. The third option, that it deliberately set out to attack the salmon farming industry knowing that it was misleading its audience, is surely impossible.”