Scottish salmon health and export issues: EIR release

Information requested

You asked for ‘information on Scottish salmon health and export issues since 1 January 2022’, specifying that the request should include ‘any health alerts, hygiene violations, public health reports, warnings, chemical violations, bacterial issues (e.g. Listeria, Coliforms, Enterococci and E.coli), customs incidents (e.g. shipments refused at the French or Polish border) and other issues involving Scottish salmon exports’.

As examples, your request referred to previous FoI responses (not issued by the Scottish Government), on the subject area of bacterial contamination of salmon product for export, and the rejection of salmon products at export within the country of destination.

Based upon the above and the examples you provided we have interpreted your request to relate to the export of Scottish salmon as a food product rather than export as live fish for aquaculture purposes.

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

The following information has been extracted from a small number of documents held relating to a single issue relevant to your request:

The steroid Beta nandrolone was detected in an export of farmed fishery products (Atlantic salmon) which related to Bakkafrost Scotland Ltd and its processing plant at Cairndow. Intensified official controls were triggered by France following the detection which was notified to UK government in September 2024. Follow up investigations within Scotland were undertaken and no non-compliance was found at the business concerned.

It should be noted that the Scottish Government holds limited information with respect to this request because we have no regulatory responsibility relating to the export of fishery products for human consumption. Food Standards Scotland may hold further information relating to your request and can be contacted via their website and openness email address - www.foodstandards.gov.scot/ / openness@fss.scot.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. Therefore, we are refusing parts of your request under the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs. The reasons why that exception applies are explained below.

Under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), the Scottish Government is not required to provide information which it does not have. The Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested because, as detailed above, we have no regulatory responsibility relating to the export of fishery products for human consumption.

This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. While we recognise that there may be some public interest in information about Scottish salmon health and export issues, clearly, we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.