Follow up information regarding steroids in Scottish and Irish salmon: EIR release

Information requested

1. “The statement…. That ‘follow up investigations within Scotland were undertaken and no noncompliance was found at the business concerned’ is not supported by any documents, facts, letters, testing, emails, notices or any other information. As requested, please provide that information.”

2. “It is perfectly reasonable to assume that the Scottish Government has access – and has at least been copied into – the information requested via my FOI”. Your statement relates to a nil response from Food Standards Scotland (FSS) regarding a similar FOI request asking for information on steroids in Scottish and Irish salmon.

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.

In response to request 1, I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested. Included in this response, I have enclosed communication with Food Standards Scotland regarding the handling of your previous requests (EIR 202500456630 and EIR 202500461393) and related media responses. As this was information gathered in the handling of these EIRs it was deemed not necessary to release because it was not information previously held by Scottish Government and the information contained in this communication was included in final responses to these previous requests.

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

In response to request 2, while our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have the information you have requested. Therefore we are refusing 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 the information you have requested because Food Standards Scotland has the regulatory responsibility relating to the export of fishery products for human consumption. Food Standards Scotland is independent from Scottish Government and as such only limited information on this matter has been shared. All information that we hold on this matter has been released to you in this or previous EIRs.

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 potential non-compliance of steroids in aquaculture products, and the information held by the Scottish Government, 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.

EIR 202500465789 - Information released - Document

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