Farms reporting above thresholds of 3 or 8 lice per fish: EIR release

You asked for:

• full details of any notification made to Marine Scotland or the Fish Health Inspectorate by any farms exceeding the trigger levels of 3 or 8 respectively, covering the period 31st July 2018  to today’s date;
• copies of all site specific escalation action plans submitted to Marine Scotland or the Fish Health Inspectorate since 31st July 2018 (please note this is a request for the actual documents provided);
• full details of all site specific escalation action plans provided to Marine Scotland or the Fish Health Inspectorate since 31st July 2018 (similarly, please note this is a request for the actual documents provided);
• any increased monitoring plans and data produced, with full details of any intervention carried out, at any farms that have reported sea lice levels over the 3 and 8 triggers, since 31st July 2018;
• full details of any warning letters, notice or enforcement action taken since 31st July 2018.

You also asked for full details of any early harvest and/or cull of farmed fish undertaken as a result of the new policy at any farm that has reported sea lice levels over 3 and 8 at any stage in 2018.

Response

As the information you have requested is ‘environmental information’ for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations.  We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA. 

This exemption is subject to the ‘public interest test’. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

Response to your request

Please find enclosed a copy of the information that you have requested. A small amount of information has been redacted from that supplied here (names of indivuduals) because and exception at regulation 11(2) (personal data) of the EIRs applies to the information. The reasons why that exception applies are set out below.

Reasons for not providing information

An exception applies.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some of  the information (names of individuals) 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.