 Si'n gofydd, sorgm Daniels. Aion i niw ddechrau yn 2018 o Gwladysgrifan Unedigerasio i'r Gwaith Gwladysgrifan Unedigerasio i fyny. Aion i chi i gael nhw, rydyn ni'n bryd i gael chi'n ffrif yn gwneud. Rwy'n Murdoff yllwedd. Felly, rydyn ni'n gweithio'r ffordd i gael i'r ffordd i'r ffordd i'r staff Llywodraeth Cerdd i'r llei Gwladysgrifan Unedigerasio i'r смesffordi. Felly, rydyn ni'n gweithio'r bus concesion scheme. There are two members who would like to make voluntary declarations of interest, and I think I'm going to start with Stuart. I do have in my register of interests that I'm the honorary president of the Scottish Association of Public Transport, and on a voluntary basis I might be thought to have an interest in that I am a holder and user of a bus pass. John Mason. I also have a bus pass. I say I'm a proud owner of a bus bus as well. I also own a bus bus, but very rarely use it. Thank you. We've identified those who have bus buses. The consideration is of one affirmative instrument as detailed in the agenda. We're going to take evidence from the Minister of Transport in Ireland and the motion of seeking the improvement will be considered item 2. I should ask the committee to note that there have been no representations to the committee on this interest. I'm going to welcome now Hamza Yousaf, the Minister for Transport and the Islands, Tom Davie, the head of bus and local transport policy unit within Transport Scotland and Gordon Hanning, the head of concessionary travel and integrated ticketing unit. Minister, would you like to make a short opening statement? I will thank you, convener, and to all those with bus passes. I'm pleased to say that you will be keeping them. Good morning and thank you very much for inviting me to discuss the national bus travel concession scheme for older and disabled persons Scotland amendment order 2018. The order sets the reimbursement rate and cap level of funding for the national concessionary travel scheme in 2018-19. In doing so, it gives effect to an agreement that we reached in January with CPT, the Confederation for Passenger Transport, which represents the bus industry. The agreement was based on a reimbursement economic model that was developed in 2013 on the basis of independent research commissioned by the Scottish Government and following extensive discussion with CPT and its advisers. With CPT and our respective advisers, we've reviewed and updated the model and the forecasts and indices used in it during 2017. We've used that as a basis for the proposed terms for 2018-19. The proposed reimbursement rate in 2018-19 is set at 56.8 per cent of the adult single fare. We believe that the rate is consistent with the aim set out in the legislation establishing the scheme that bus operators should be no better or no worse off as a result of participating in the scheme. It is only marginally different from last year's rate of 56.9 per cent. That will provide a welcome degree of stability for bus operators. On the basis of the reimbursement rate and our expectation for future journey numbers and fares, we forecast that claims for reimbursement will come to £202.1 million over the next year. The figure is reflected in the draft order as the budgetary cap. The order is limited to the coming year. Our work to update the model during 2017 identified a significant uncertainty around what should be the impact of changes in the relative level of the adult single fare. We agreed with CPT that we would leave this element of the model unchanged for 2018-19, but agreed to return to the matter during 2018 to inform next year's negotiations. The committee will also be aware that we have recently consulted on ways in which to ensure the longer-term sustainability of the national concessionary travel scheme on the implementation of our commitment to extend free bus travel to young modern apprentices and whether to provide companion cars for disabled people under five. The consultation closed in November 2017, having attracted almost 3,000 responses. Those have been analysed and the summary report and individual responses will be published in the coming weeks. We will of course also be sending our response to the consultation. In conclusion, we know that older and disabled people greatly value the free bus travel that the scheme provides, which enables them to access local services, visit friends and relatives and gain from the health benefits of a more active lifestyle. The order provides for those benefits to continue for a further year on a basis that is fair to operators and, of course, affordable to taxpayers. I commend the order to the committee and, of course, happy to answer any questions. Thank you, minister. We have questions. I'm going to start with Mike and then go to John Mike. Just looking at the figure of £202.1 million that's in the SSI, looking at the budget booklet that we were all given when we just voted through the budget, concessionary fares and bus services, the budget is £269.1 million. I was just wondering where the other £67 million in the budget is going. BSOG is the largest part of that, the bus service operator grant, which we used to substice. The bus industry and element of that will also be financial transactions, so we might use that, for example, the bus abatement scheme in relation to making buses cleaner and greener. I can get a detailed breakdown, a few wishes and writing, but the vast majority of that will be the bus service operator grant. That would be very helpful if you could get a breakdown in writing. If you could submit to the clerks breakdown of the budget figure, that would be very helpful. The £202.1 million is not very much different from previous years. That's a limit that can't be breached, isn't it? Has the limit come anywhere close to being breached in previous years? I can send him the table if he would find it useful, but I have the figure from 2006, right the way through to the present day, of what the budget cap was and what the scheme payments ended up being. There is some variation and, obviously, forecast. If we take this financial year that is coming, we are forecasting to be just about at the limit of that cap. In previous years, if I look at 1617, for example, it came in under the cap. I look at 1718 as a sabre forecast to come round about bang on the cap. If I look at 1516, it came under the cap, but then I look at other years, I can find years where it came in, payments came in above the cap. There is some variation and that is a forecast, as a model that is agreed with CPT, but if the member would find it helpful, I'm sure we can give them figures for, for example, the past 10 years of what the budget cap was and what the actual payments were. The reason I ask is that I've had a meeting with the bus operators and they tell me that because this limit can't be breached, there's no incentive, in fact, not only is there no incentive, apparently they are not being encouraged to advertise the use of the concessionary cards that people have to encourage greater bus use. If the objective of the Scottish Government is to increase bus use, and I noticed for the first time it's gone below the £4 million level of bus journeys, if the policy is to encourage greater bus use, and the finance is capped at £202 million and a budget of £269 million, and the bus users are saying they would like to advertise for people to use the concessionary cards to get more travel, but they seem to, well, they certainly indicated to me, and I would like to know whether this is true or not, whether the Scottish Government actually has a policy of saying to them, don't encourage the use of the concessionary card, don't advertise it. What's the situation? Sure, certainly no policy exists like that at all. There's no direction from the Scottish Government. Would you be happy if they did advertise it? Yes, I would be, of course, and this is why we've got a consultation on the longer-term sustainability of it. Just on the cardholder's point, it's worth having the figures in front of me here that, in 2006-07, there were 900,000 cardholders, there's now 1.3 million or above 1.3 million cardholders, so we are seeing an increase, and we have, over the last decade, plus seeing an increase in cardholders, which is positive, so I don't think it bears out in the figures, and, again, we can provide the member with the figures. But you're not worried, and there's absolutely no concern from— Yes, I want to address that point. If they advertise it. No, I've got no concern of them advertising that at all, but the point that he makes and the operators have made to him is a fair one. There is a concern around the longer-term sustainability of it. We know well, and this committee knows well, that we have an ageing population, an ageing demographic, as most of Western Europe does, and therefore we have to find a balance between making this scheme fair, realising the benefits of it, and making it, of course, sustainable in the long term, and that's why we have had the consultation. That's why it garnered probably 3,000 people contributing to it because of the vast interest in it, and we do have to look at that sustainability. Now, I've said in my opening remarks that we'll publish the analysis of that consultation in coming weeks, and then the Government's response to that as well. So, when the operators say they have concerns around perhaps the sustainability of it because of the budget cap or anything else, I don't think that's unfounded, I think. I can appreciate the fact that they would have that, but I would say to him that the consultation aims to try to see how we can make that scheme sustainable in the long term. John, then Stuart and then Colin. To ask about the reimbursement, on a recent day I used the bus six times, so if that was six single fares, that would be about £13 in Glasgow, and if the company's getting 56 per cent, that would be about £7, so they're getting £7 that day. If I bought an all-day ticket myself, it would have been £4.50, so they appear to be making a profit. Is that taken into account when the percentage reimbursement is fixed? I mean, I think again I said in my statement in 2013 that we agreed to review the model, and we've been looking at reviewing it ever since. Now, I have to appreciate the dynamics at play here where the bus operators somewhat understandably will look to defend their position. We'll also do our best, of course, to get the best value for the taxpayer, and in that we've seen again from, if I take 2006-07, the beginning of the scheme, that 73.6 per cent was the reimbursement rate. I mean, we've now got it down to 56.8, which is, of course, a good deal for the taxpayer. But what I would say is that we've agreed to remain consistent on the adult single fare for this financial year, but throughout 2018 I'll be reviewing that and looking into that, and we'll look at what possible or potential changes we might make for 1920, because there are issues, I think, around other fares, and I think that it's only right that we explode them. So I can promise them that it's absolutely part of our consideration this year in 2018, but clearly it has to be a negotiation, almost a compromise of discussion with the bus operators. Just one other point kind of on that. I mean, I think some of the companies now have to get two levels of single fare, because one is if you turn up, and one is if you buy it and have it on your phone. I assume it's the highway that's being used. Yeah, I'll double check, but I'll, with Gordon, maybe to come in on that. Yeah, it's quite a new development in that, and they're actually in discussion with the bus company. We've got one person, which is with MegaBus and Citialink, who have always had fares that are much higher if you turn up on the day compared to if you book in advance of line, and we worked out a formula that recognised that both positions were valid. So this has been quite a recent advent mobile phone-based fares that are a bit cheaper than the pay with cash fare. So we're actually in the middle of discussions with the Lingers free bus companies who are in that position at the moment, and we're discussing with them, but certainly our view is that having already set a precedent that it shouldn't be the highest fare, it should be some mix that represents the mix of the two fares. I expect to ask what will happen. Thanks. Colin, I think you're going to do the last question. There's no-one else indicated. So Colin, if I could ask you to... Thanks very much, convener. I know that the minister said that the bus pass would stay, but he never gave me any guarantee when I reached the same ages. My older colleagues here at 6-day, I'll have accessed our bus pass, but I'm sure we'll see the results of that soon. Can I just follow up on the question on fares? By setting the rate, a percentage of an adult fare, do you agree that that is an incentive to bus companies to keep adult fares high because, obviously, by definition, they'll receive a higher percentage? Is that something that's going to be addressed when you reconsider this in the future? It's something we've been aware of, of course, since actually the beginning of the scheme. Before I say that, I think, just let me say, I'm sure it's many, many years until Colin reaches the age of needing a bus pass. But what I would say to Colin Smith is that we have very strict tests in place when it comes to any bus operator looking to increase the adult fare. Again, for the point of brevity, if the convener would like me to share some of that, we have a standard fares test, which applies if any bus operator looks to increase the adult single fare. That involves having to provide a heck of a lot of data to Gordon and the team to analyse, to pull over, to see, for example, if any increase is fair and is justified. There is a standard fares test there. I suppose whatever fare we ended up using, Colin Smith's point would be correct, there could be an incentive for some bus operators to increase that, but that's why we have the checks and balances very much in place. If it's helpful to the member, I'll go through the usual protocols of going through the convener and we can send some detail in the standard fares test, which we have for the point of brevity. I think that that would be helpful, minister. There is one further question from Peter Chapman, and then I'd like to ask him if he'd like to make a closing statement, so Peter. Thanks, convener. It's just to explore the cap a wee bit more. Is the £202.1 million an absolute cap, because he said in previous years he had actually breached the cap. So what happens if the demand is greater than what the cap allows? I'll probably ask my colleague Tom David to come in, because yes, there have been times when the cap, the payments have been above the budgetary cap, and again I'll send the details on, but Tom will be able to come in on probably more detail on that. Thank you, convener. The cap has been, claims have exceeded the cap in the past on, I think, one, two, three, four, five occasions. On three occasions the cap was applied, so basically claims above the value of the cap towards the end of the year were not met in full. On two occasions the claims were met, in effect met above the cap by means of exceptional payments under the general power, grant-giving powers equivalent to meeting the claims. They were associated with various issues to do with transitions to new reimbursement arrangements and so on. It's not, if you like, a precedent, but the cap is there, it is the cap, but we have on occasion for good reason to come beyond it. I think that, my understanding also, if there's ever been a time when there's been exceptional circumstances that were perhaps out with the bus operators control, then we're happy to look at that. I suppose if we looked at the winter and the weather we've had, although bad weather tends to depress patronage, if there was the opposite effect that was out with the bus operators control, then we wouldn't be close minded to continuing conversation with them. It really is important to stress that the concessionary scheme is really about dialogue with the bus operators, and we try to be fair where we can. A brief follow-up. It would appear that the cap isn't a cap. If you get to the last three weeks of the campaign and you've reached the cap, what happens then to folk with bus passes? Are they still on it or what happens? They're still on it. The bus operator would have to pick up the tab for that would be my understanding, so they wouldn't get the Government reimbursement for that. As I say, it's absolutely right. We have to have it at a level of flexibility. The cap is there, and some levels of that cap have been applied. We should also be reasonable, because we know it's based on forecasting, and we'll always get forecasting absolutely right to the penny and to the pound. It's not an exact science, but we do it based on the data that we have available. We have some element of flexibility, and that's based on the conversations and the constructive dialogue that we have with the bus operators. A final one, Mr Rumbles. I think that it's important, because whether the cap is there or isn't there, I go back to my first question, which I like the response from, which is that if one bus company decides to advertise their use and encourage people to use their bus passes, and therefore gains more revenue that way, if there is a cap, then the other bus companies will not be reimbursed from the Government for that advertising process. Is that correct? No, I try to see what he's doing there, but the bus operator, of course, is no worse or no better off. That's the principle of the reimbursement rate. So if it chose to increase patronage by getting more older people to come on and take day trips, then actually, as a company, they should be in a better position, even if the cap is breached. I understand where he's going with the logic, and I just go back to my point that the sustainability of it, the long-term sustainability of the scheme has to be looked at because of the population demographics we have. But if you're asking me, as a minister and as a Government, have we ever given direction to bus companies about it, my direction would be to be that, I think, as a very popular scheme, I see the benefits of it, and if they want to advertise it to get more older people to come on their bus routes, they should absolutely do that. Thank you, minister. Do you want to make a short closing statement, or do you believe that the questions have brought all the points out? I'm happy to weave my rate to her closing statement. I don't think it's right, so you're not quite in a court yet. Minister, could I also say that we would look forward to receiving the information through the clerks that you've undertaken to give us. So on that basis, I'd like to move to agenda item 2, which is formal consideration of motion 10336 in the name of the Minister for Transport and the Islands to recommend that the national bus travel concessionary scheme for older and disabled persons Scotland, amendment order 2018 draft, be approved. I'd like to invite you, minister, to move that motion and ask you if you have any further comments to make at this stage. I move the motion in my name. I have to formally ask if any members have a comment to make, Richard. Yes, it's been quite nice to see that the system unlike people before saying that it would be done away with or amended has been kept and I compliment the minister for that and I'd be more than happy to approve the order. I think that that was a political point. I'm not sure, minister, if you want to add anything to that. Are there any other comments from members that they'd like to make? Okay, so therefore the question is that motion 10336 be agreed, are we all agreed? Yes, we are agreed. Therefore I'd now like to briefly suspend the meeting to allow the panel to depart. Thank you, minister. I'd like to move on to agenda item 3 which is subordinate in legislation. There are two negative instruments and regarding disabled persons' badges for vehicles and the Scottish road workers register. There have been no motions to annul received in relation to this instrument. Is the committee agreed? It doesn't wish to make any recommendations in relation to these instruments. Good, that is agreed. I'm now going to suspend the meeting briefly to allow the witnesses to take their seats. Thank you. Okay, I'd now like to reconvene the meeting and move on to agenda item 4 which is to do with salmon farming in Scotland. I'd like to welcome to the committee Donald Cameron, who is here on behalf of the Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform Committee. I am going to ask members to make a declaration of their interests and before they do, I would like to make a declaration a more detailed declaration of my interests so that the committee and everyone is aware of it. Before we start on the next session in agriculture and in particular salmon farming, I want to make this detailed declaration of interest. As members will know, my register of interest shows that I'm a co-owner of a wild salmon fishery. This salmon fishery is on the River Spay and the east coast of Scotland. The migration routes for smolts leaving the river and salmon returning to the river are along the east coast which has no significant salmon farming that can affect these fish. Thus, salmon farming has no impact on my registered interest as a salmon fishing proprietor. I want to make it clear that I approach this inquiry with a very open mind, with over 40 years' experience in salmon biology. I understand that salmon farming has a significant role to play in a vibrant Scottish economy and that is the way I'll be approaching this inquiry. I wondered if there were any other members of the committee who would like to make a declaration of interest relating to salmon fishing, in particular Donald. Thank you, convener. Obviously, I'm not a member of the committee, but I feel that it would be appropriate to refer to my register of interests and two interests therein. Firstly, fish farming. I own a property that benefits from an income from fish farming. Secondly, fishing as in terms of a wild fishery. I'd like to put that on record. This is our first evidence session on the committee's salmon farming in Scotland inquiry. The committee will take evidence today from the agricultural research body and an economist with a detailed knowledge of the sector. I'd like to welcome the following witnesses, Professor Paul Tett, reader in coastal ecosystems, the Scottish Association for Marine Science, Professor James... Should I say Bronn? Bronn, thank you. Professor in agriculture, the University of Stirling. Professor Harf Mughod, I hope I've got that right. Professor of agricultural breeding and physiology, the University of Stirling. And Steve Westbrook, an economist, an author of the 2017 HIE Marine Scotland report on the value of agriculture to Scotland. Welcome. If I could say to you, I think that you've all given evidence so you know you don't need to push any of the buttons in front of you. That all happens automatically. If you'd like to say anything or come back or answer a specific question, if you catch my eye, I will try and bring you in at the appropriate moment. As I do say to committee members as well, please, once you're speaking, don't then studiously avoid my eye because I may want to condense your answer to allow somebody else in so that everyone gets a chance. I'd like to move, if I may, straight to the first question, which I believe John Mason is going to ask. Thanks, convener. At the start of this inquiry, clearly one of the huge areas around salmon farming is exports. My questions are around exports. I really want to ask just a general question. Is it the case that however much we produce, we will be able to export it? Or could it ever be the case that we were producing more that we couldn't export? Or could we be selling more at the home end? In recent days, we've had the United States talking about tariffs on some goods, I don't think on fish at the moment, but should we be concerned about exports or can we just export as much as we can produce? On that one, we're certainly currently, there's no constraint in the sense that however much the salmon farms in Scotland produce, they can be sold either in the home market or the export market. As you'll probably be aware, the industry structures such that, the same companies that dominate the Scottish industry have also got businesses in Norway, Chile and other countries, and we tactically divide up the world market between them. Scotland, from our figures, produced about 7.5 per cent of world production, so it's a relatively minor player worldwide. The feedback that we got when we were carrying out research for this study, we spoke to all of the main producing companies and other people with the knowledge of the sector, that the industry had, while we were actually producing the work, had come out with expectations of doubling production by 2030 and our brief also had been to look to the period towards 2030. And nobody's got any doubts that if they did double, that they might be able to sell it. The growth of the world market and these people also being involved with other countries know the kind of plans and scenarios, if you like. So the simple answer to that question is that there doesn't seem to be a constraint, but things change, obviously, when we're looking 10 years ahead. Get it the other way round, would there be enough food? Because I understand that the food is imported largely, would there be enough food to feed all these salmon? Again, that's something which can be expanded. Marine Harvest, you might be aware, are opening their own food plants in Skye, and that's going to... In fact, there's a bit of concern by some people that that would actually reduce the sales and the production of the other companies in the UK. So, again, there's no evidence that I've seen that whether there's a constraint. I was wondering if somebody wanted to come in. I was wondering, James, if you wanted to come in on the food issue that John's raised or whether somebody else on the panel would like to look at that or comment on that. Yeah, I'd be happy to comment on that. So, fish meal and fish hole is actually what we're discussing about. It's a finite resource. But there's been a lot of innovation to try to find alternative diets, and the research has been ongoing now for at least 10 years, where there is a number of ways where we can substitute the diet. So, I don't feel that at the moment the diets would be the main limitation to the industry to grow. This said, it is a global market, as it was just said, and it really depends on how the growth is sustained in other parts of the world. I'm thinking about Chile, for example, or Canada, or Tasmania, and there is aspiration for growth all over the world. So, we have to look into really the global supply. But I think a lot of these new innovations that are bringing different types of proteins, or meals, have already been included in the diets. I don't see any reason why this is not going to go further. So, I don't believe it's really majorising. I think we're going to come a bit more on to that later. Can I come back to you, John, for small questions? Thanks very much. Probably just one more question, but you've kind of stressed, Mr Westbrook, about how it's a global market and all of this kind of thing. You've also been suggested, I think, by HIE, that perhaps Scotland would do better if our salmon was seen as more distinct on the one hand, but on the other hand, I think we do have protected geographical indication for Scottish salmon, so I'm not sure I'm fairly new to this. Is Scottish salmon seen as distinct around the world, and is it more important that it should be more distinct? The branding in the UK is very much that Scottish salmon is the prime product in supermarkets, and others will stress that, and they'll put the name of the farm on the packaging and so on. It's a bit more dubious about whether Scottish salmon is actually better than salmon, say, for Norway. It can be a matter of taste, and no doubt at all in the countries where Norwegian salmon is being promoted, Dobby promoting Norwegian salmon is the best. That is quite important to the UK market. With exports, there can be differentiation, so there's the Labours Rouge in France, which marine harvest supply, so a percentage of their product, in fact, their best product, if you like, goes under that label, so there's a kind of branding even within the production. Speaking to Westerloss salmon, who's one of the smaller producers as part of this study, about how they sell into the American market, that's very much niche, so they or their agents will speak to restaurant chains and such like and promote their salmon as being the best. In fact, they sell in America, they sell it as Westerloss salmon rather than Scottish salmon. So there's a lot of ways in which the branding works, but the reality is tricky because even when they're selling in supermarkets and they're depending on using Scottish salmon, if there's a shortage of supply and they have to bring in Norwegian salmon instead, they have to market it in such a way that it's a bit more generic. OK, thank you. Peter, I think you've got a supplementary, though. Mr Westbrook said that the Scottish produce was about 7.5 per cent of the world market place. I assume that was for farmed salmon, you were speaking. What percentage of the demand for salmon is actually supplied through wild salmon catches? I mean, just to get a feel for how much is farmed and how much is actually wild salmon. I mean, I haven't looked at that recently, but some years ago when we looked at it, it was very dominant, the percentage share of wild salmon compared with farmed salmon. Even top restaurants now, you tend to see farmed fish and they'll be farmed fishing in Shetland, they'll be putting forward as a prime product and certainly in my experience, you very rarely see wild salmon on the menu. OK. I can give you some figures for that. The most recent figures I have are commercial landings of wild salmon in the north-western Atlantic region. That's the whole of northern Europe, or about 2,000 tonnes a year. You can compare that with the Scottish harvest for farmed salmon at 160,000 to 170,000 tonnes and the Norwegian harvest of over a million tonnes. The wild salmon is a very, very small percentage of the market place. Thank you. Yes, sure. Just on that, in looking at the world market, Alaskan salmon, which is a reasonably significant player, is a wild salmon, is it not? Well, it's a salmonoid, it's a different species. You might be right. That is true, so there's a very large wild stocks there. There's very little farming in most of that area. Is there a brief way of characterising the difference between Alaskan salmon and the salmon that is bred in the farms? No, because they're an entirely different species and they're very easily to differentiate. You can do it by appearance. If you had to, if you had just had a fillet, you could do it by a range of tests, including molecular tests of various sorts, so they're very easy to distinguish. In the supermarkets, the wild salmon that you're talking about is less fatty definitely than the Scottish salmon, but for me, as a consumer of it, the element of fat makes it actually perfect for frying and baking and such like, as opposed to the wild fish being dry. But it's a natural taste. Okay, we're going to move on to the next question, which is Fulton. Good morning, panel. We talked a bit about the Norwegian salmon as well. The briefing notes here say that three of the five largest salmon farm companies are Norwegian-owned. Does this have any impact at all on the benefits to Scotland? It's a tricky one because 25 years ago, there was a lot of small producers in Scotland that did a study on Sky 25 years ago, and there were lots and lots of small producers, and gradually they got taken over by these multinationals so they now dominate the industry. I think one downside, we want to look at some intellectual capital and innovation and such like taking place in the sector as a driver of economic impact, and there's no doubt that the bigger companies tend to focus on that like Marine Harvest in Norway. So we don't quite have those jobs, but what it does mean is that when new technologies come about, and I think one of the key ones is going to be being able to develop larger sites offshore, also recirculation, small units onshore, most of the R&D works being done in Norway for that. But once the technologies are proven, they can then be imported here and brought in cost-effectively. It's probably quite a beneficial balance. Does anyone else want to add to that? Fulton, do you want to follow that up, or are you happy with that? We're really just to say that. I'm not personally no bothered where somebody comes from, if they're running an organisation or a company, but it does seem that the Norwegian thing is significant in that from earlier answers they are obviously a competitor. I suppose what I was trying to get out there is there any impact on the Scottish market, because there are Norwegian-owned companies? It's beneficial in the sense that, because if you take Marine Harvest, for example, the largest producer, they split the market so that they're selling most of their UK production in the UK. It fits, if you like, their national model. Let's suppose that they didn't have any UK site or Scottish science. They would be selling their Norwegian salmon into Scotland and competing against the others, so it's beneficial. We'll move on to the next question, which is, Gail Ross. Thank you, convener. Good morning, panel. My question leads nicely on from the line of questioning that Fulton MacGregor had just started. It's to do with the HIE report, that you had quite a big input into. It estimates that the direct and direct and induced impacts of salmon farming creates 10,340 jobs that they're about in Scotland. Can you tell us about those direct and direct jobs and where they're located, roughly? Part of our brief wasn't to specify rural Scotland or Highlands and Islands within the Scottish total. I'd quite like to have done that, but just working through, because of this session, the different categories, this is a report that any figures I'm quoting is taken from, so this is on HIE's website and it was released last July. But there's a table in there which shows all the different supply chain elements, which add up to this 10,300 that you mentioned. Now, very approximately, almost half of those will be in rural Scotland, of which nearly all will be in the Highlands and Islands, which include Invernesses as rural. About 5,000 of those, roughly. The vast majority of jobs on the sites are in the Highlands and Islands. Most of the processing jobs now are in other parts of Scotland. They've tended to move a bit away. One aspect of the types of jobs is important. In the Scottish economy, there's an increasing problem of low earnings occupations and sectors going up and higher paying runs going down, and the rates of pay for people working on the farms is relatively good compared with, say, people working in processing. So not only is it an important employer out of that total, but the types of jobs are very suitable, or have been suitable for the people in the rural areas who perhaps haven't had other opportunities, particularly farming jobs going down, fishing jobs going down in many areas. Okay, thanks. You also talk about the additional economic benefits, and I represent a big rural constituency myself. I know that a lot of these places have jobs that have had partners that have had other jobs, we've kept local schools open, all these kinds of things. What social and community impacts from fish farms do these rural communities get from them? Also, the community charter covering the SSPO's and the community benefit fund. Can you tell us a little bit more about that as well? I'm not too familiar with the community benefit fund as such. If we look at the impacts of the individual companies that have got some farming sites, we've done work for Marine Harvest, the salmon company, Westeraw salmon and others on that question about employment. It has been a very beneficial mixture, because if you come into a local area and you might create even perhaps 10 or 12 jobs, then something like half of those jobs go to local people who benefit from them, but also people move in to fill the other jobs and that helps to repopulate or even increase the population in some areas. Partners come in and get other jobs, so work that we've done again for the other companies shows that quite a lot of the partners will be working in local hospitals, teaching in local schools and such like. So there's a very strong element there. Another important impact is where, say, a marine site is developed and that is then usable by other sectors and leisure boats can use it and such like. The industries are very well integrated into their communities, so certainly that's again the message that we get, that they're not just valued for the jobs that they're providing but also the other wider impacts. OK, thank you. OK, we're going to move on to the next question. Steve, I think you've been put under the spotlight, so maybe there's a chance for some of the other witnesses to come in and I think this may be the question that allows them to do that, so Jamie. Thank you, Gavina. Good morning, panel. Could I start with asking some questions around statistics? I'm hoping someone in the panel has the knowledge. I've gone through my briefing papers, but I can't find them specifically. The proportion of salmon that is farmed in Scotland is consumed in the domestic market and what percentage is exported. I do want to see if I can bring another member of the panel in as well, so if there's anyone else that would like to come in, if you could just indicate, if not, I'm going to let Steve. Steve, let's start. You're still under the spotlight. Exports are tricky because the figures that you see are a combination of fish that is just sold as produced and processed fish, and you can get double counting sometimes. Also, there's re-exporting. There's fish that come from the ferros down to Grimsby and then get re-exported and it comes into the export figures, even though it's not produced in this country, so it's actually quite complex. I would say, as a rule of thumb, that about half of the Scottish production is consumed in the UK in one way or another, with or without processing and packaging. Thank you, and I apologise, Steve. Unfortunately, this line of questions may remain on your side of the table, but we have many others for the rest of the panel. Of the fish that is consumed in Scotland or indeed the UK, is that fish processed in the UK or does it exit the UK and come back as a processed product? I haven't come across any examples where it's processed and then comes back. There might be the very occasional one, because of world markets. It might occasionally happen, but generally speaking, all the value is added in the UK. Not always in Scotland but in the UK. Therefore, on the export market, I presume a proportion of that export market is whole fish as opposed to processed fish. I guess where I'm heading with this line of questions is there more opportunity for Scotland to develop its processing industry. I read from our notes that the number of processors has decreased quite dramatically over the last 10 years as we were exporting more whole fish. What are the reasons why the whole fish export market is increasing and why do you think the processing industry is not doing so well in that respect? The economics tend to work better if the fish is processed closer to where the consumers consume it, not least because in some countries the rates of pay and such like in processing, whether it's smoking or whatever, are much lower than in the UK, so there's always going to be that trend. There has been an upward trend as well in the UK for processing. If you look in your supermarkets, almost every year there's more and more products, more and more different selling products around. The more value is added to them, the more packs are made smaller, the more employment impact there is in the UK from that. I don't think there's an issue of lost opportunity, if you like, of more processing in this country. I think it's tending to happen. You seem quite buoyant about the processing industry in that respect. We may come on to Brexit, but there's a problem potentially with labour supply in processing. With what, sorry? There's a potential problem with labour supply in processing because there's a very high dependence on overseas labour. We'll keep your comments to the section on Brexit which you rightly say is coming down the tracks to us and later in this session. Jamie, is there anything further you'd like to... Stuart, hopefully now we're going to get some of the other panel witnesses in. Stuart? Well, I wouldn't hold your breath too much, because I think it's probably after me that we removed that sign to imagine how there can be a scientific aspect to this. I'm interested in how we get the maximum yield of a fish carcass. Of course, in part, that can be how we breed it, how we operate the farm, but also it can be the industrial process that's related to that. So what are we doing to improve the proportion of a whole fish that goes who's getting the flesh for consumption? Before seeking an answer to that, I recently visited someone in my parliamentary constituency whose business is to retrieve the discards from the processing, the heads and the skeletal remains, and they turn that into food, of which he exports dried to West Africa, where it's regarded as a delicacy. So there's clearly scope for doing more than we're currently doing. But what is the industry doing that helps drive up yield from the carcasses? Who'd like you to... Maybe I'll ask a scope, I'm afraid. On the economic side, it's quite high. The impression that I get from the companies is that they do try and use as high proportion as they can. If you buy dog food, for example, there'll be salmon in that, and that will be the very lowest quality, if you like, that they can get off of the salmon. I've not actually heard anybody saying that there's an opportunity to increase that, but I don't know whether colleagues have got any. I would agree. I'm not aware that there is a lot of opportunity to increase the yield. I think a lot of work has been done towards this. I think a lot of new technologies have been implemented in processing farms, and it is such an important part of the business of salmon farming to make sure that you recover as much of the product as you can. And now a lot of the trimmings also are starting to be converted into added value products. Over the years, selective breeding has been used, which obviously one of the traits, they have many of them, one of the traits was quality, but also yield, which is really the mass, the muscle that you're producing. I think there's still selecting for it, but I don't know if there's actually a lot of scope now to increase significantly. Well, in relation to the biology of the fish, does the yield go up as the age of the fish goes up? In other words, is there an incentive to keep the fish longer because you'll get more out of it for lower investment, or is there an incentive that moves in the other direction? It's the opposite. Because of the constraints on our biomass and what sites can produce, there's something like a 24-month cycle for the salmon, and the quicker they can harvest it and get the next fish in, that's very much in their interest, rather than keeping the fish as long as possible on the farms. Is it a better product if it grows more slowly? I think it might depend if it's growing more slowly. It might be because it's not being as well-fed or whatever, or the conditions in the areas that are slow-growing might not be as good. I mean, Shetland, for example, they make the best conditions in Scotland with the kind of currents and areas that have a grain salmon. I think that the salmon is quite fast-growing up in Shetland. The feeds they're given and the environment they're brought up in will have different effects on flesh quality, so it's less about age than their experiences. Maybe just as a final to close off my little section here. Is there scope here a requirement for further research? I'm hearing there are diverse outcomes in different parts of our geography that might have diverse economic benefits and disbenefits. Is there enough research? Of course, this is an invitation to the three academics to respond in a particular way, but the committee would want to hear evidence on the new opinion. Just on the economic front, one of the interesting questions for the next 10, 15 years is the progress that might be made on sites further offshore. When we did a report back in 2007 on the Scottish sector, everybody was saying then, and this is the industry, that we would have had that by now. It's really quite interesting the way the production has grown since then because they've been so profitable. They haven't, in a way, had to take the risk and make the extra investments of that. As our report shows, if the industry is going to achieve its target of doubling, that is going to involve more sites offshore, bigger sites, and it's very possible. Again, my colleagues might have a better idea about this, that if the fish is being grown further offshore in different types of conditions, it may be higher quality. I think the size matter, of course it's matter, because the yield would increase with size to some extent, but to a point where then the fish will potentially start to mature. Maturation during the ongoing is very detrimental because you're using a lot of yield. I guess it's not only true in salmon, it's true in most species. You want to grow the fish to optimal size, which is for the market and for the yield, but before some of the physiology and biology takes over, like maturation, which then is working against the industry and has quality concerns, but also has concerns for the welfare of the fish when they mature. I think the industry has always been trying to be producing fish that are relatively large, and that's the reason why salmon is a large fish, five, six kilos, potentially more if possible, but there is a risk that other physiological events will be detrimental. There's two follow-ups. I'd just like to ask a question. One of the things that became clear in the Eclare report was the fact that there were use of ras and lump suckers for lice removal. Obviously, there is a limited lifespan of these fish within the regulations. I mean, is that a market? Is there a market for ras once, you know, for edible and lump suckers? I don't know what the answer to that is. Is that something that fish farms should be looking at or are looking at? I don't know who has a... I can try to answer the questions. This is a very, very important consideration that the industry is looking into, especially because the number of cleaner fish is large, it's been increasing, and there's always been a concern on what can we do with this fish in the cycle once they've done their job. The two species are extremely different in terms of their biology and in terms of the potential for developing products and added value. At the moment, the ras, especially the Balan ras, there's been a development into exports in Asia where there is a market for the fish. There's not so much a market in Europe. It's not seen as a very good fish to eat. You could argue maybe in France a little bit. You can find it in some French recipe, but this is not really what consumers are looking for. There are other potential interesting biotechnological development that could come also from ras species. Without going too much in details, there are specificities and pigments that are in the blood, which are some very interesting pharmaceutical property and it's already been used as a very powerful antioxidant. One I'm trying to illustrate is that the industry and the scientific community is very proactive at trying to find markets for this fish. If you look at L'Omsaker, it's a bit different. There is a well-known, I'm sure you're aware, fisheries and markets based on the caviar, the raw from the fish, but in terms of the nutritional value of the fish itself for consumers, also it's not really yet identified how we could market them. A number of chefs around the world have already been trying to be very innovative in the way they could cook and prepare and transform these products, and I think some successes are coming, but Western are there. It's one of these times where I'm going to say that more research is definitely needed in order to better use the kind of fish. Peter, do you want a brief follow-up? We're looking to get maximum yield. Is there any market out there to use the carcass in the bit that's left and process that into fish meal and then feed it back to the salmon? Is that happening? Is that used to happen with meat and bone meal and it was banned for very good reasons? I just want to be sure that part of the process at all. You noticed there was sort of nervousness amongst the committee there because of the previous probably effects of doing that in sheep and cattle. Who'd like to head off down the route on that? No one. I'm not saying I'm going to give a formal answer, but what I could say is that it is definitely not done. It doesn't mean that fish trimmings are not used, but from other species. In other words, we cannot feed salmon from trimmings of salmon. That's definitely not something that is allowed, but trimmings and heads and other products coming from other fisheries and other species can actually be included in the form of fish oil and fish meal. These are very high value because we are always looking at fish meal and fish oil being a problem, but obviously they have very rich content in fish meal and fish oil. The oils or the product that are obtained from the trimmings from salmon can be used, but that cannot be used in the salmon industry, can be used in others industry and that can involve livestock industry for example of all very different species. Thank you. I think the next question, Richard, is you. Good morning, gentlemen. The situation with salmon has, the industry has grown excellently over the last number of years and we want it to grow more, but the one problem that we have and I feel is that we are committed to the questions that I think are touching on, the problem that the industry has is fish health and mortality challenges. They have got losses, quite a substantial amount of losses through escapes and also through mortality. I am reminded of people now like free-range hens, don't like battery type situations. We have got pens to my mind and I am not near a fish farm but to my mind substantially too many fish in the pen. Does that cause disease? Why has farmed salmon mortality increased in recent years? Why is there a difference between mortality rates in Scotland and in Norway? We have just heard that some of the companies that own the ones in Scotland are Norwegian so why is there differences? I have got a few questions, convener, but I will try to put one or two together. Richard, I am very happy because there are quite complex questions that you are asking. If we gave the panel a chance to answer that one first and then move on to the other. You will get time, Mr Llyw. Who would like to head off on that? It seems to be fundamental. How do you resolve the mortality rates? Do you want to do that and then I will try to bring James in? I can get started because I wanted to make two points and I think that while no mortality is acceptable so that is very clear. To put things in perspective I think we also need to look into mortalities in salmon, and mortalities in other species that are economically important all over the world. Again, I am not justifying mortalities and I think we are going to come on to the subject and explain a little bit further differences with Norway and the challenges that the industry is meeting. The first point is the mortality in wild salmon. Usually it is above 90%. There are a number of studies that have been done in the UK, in the States, also in Norway. They are showing that in some very few cases you have 70% mortality, which is very very few, which was actually one example. Most of the time it is up to 99% mortality. In terms of the biology of the species this is what is happening in the wild. Again, it does not justify the fact that mortalities can be high in farming. The other point I wanted to make is that salmon and other species like salmonids are unique in terms of the level of mortality, which is very low compared to any other species that is farmed in the sea all over the world. I think again it is not justifying but it is important to understand. If you take most important marine finfish species in Europe and the world, the lowest level of mortality that you find will be in seabass and seabrim. Usually you can have up to 40% survival, which is very high for marine fish. But when you look into other temporary species like cod, you will at best get lower than 10%. 10% survival, 90% mortalities. If you look into... There is a lot of experience on cod farming and cod research. It has been very active over the last 20 years in the UK before the cod industry collapsed. If you look into the wild, there are studies also that have been looking at cod mortalities and you are looking at 99.95%, a fraction of a percent survival in the wild in the species. So what I'm saying is that these species overall all have biology or have been adapting in a way that the number of offspring they produce versus the survival is an adaptation for survival in the wild environment. So that was just these two points I wanted to make. And now again I think we need to go a little bit deeper. I'm sure James will be very happy to start to explain the health challenges. So I'll continue if I can. So we're in a particular period when we have a diverse range of health challenges. So in the past it's been a much more simple situation but particularly at the moment we have an access really between sea lice and these complex gill pathologies. And these gill pathologies are caused by a range of different pathogens and environmental influences. So we have viral pathogens, bacterial pathogens, parasites and also the effects of water temperature causing ulva blooms which again cause gill problems. And these also feed back to sea lice as well. So we've got a number of different pathogens and so these mortalities in part result from the combination of these different pathogens. So we don't, if you've been looking at these lists of the causes of mortality so there was a list put out recently. So the main recording mortalities come down to the gills, some viral pathogens and also in terms of non-infections reasons. We have ulgal damage, so damage from ulgal blooms, damage from treatments, losses due to poor performing fish and also losses due to handling. In a particular position at the moment where we have had very good control for instance of sea lice in the recent past but that is now and that has been largely due to the use of veterinary medicines but now we're getting less efficacious medicines due to drug resistance. We have a period where we're having to move from a situation where we're mostly or have a large input from drug use to on where we're having to use a lot of different other treatments. So we're having to rely much more on the use of different approaches, mechanical approaches or physical approaches, use of drugs, use of management tools, a whole range of different approaches used to control the salmon. You asked also about differences with Norway. We have quite a different industry and we also have a different range of environments here. So parts of Norway have very low problems for some of these pathogens whereas we have quite extensive problems with the pathogens through Scotland. I'm not sure if I've... There's a couple of people who want to come in on this particular question. If there's another question... If I can get... Yes, absolutely, go for it. So basically, gentlemen, what you're telling me or correct me if I'm wrong, that will have high mortality rates and we can't do anything about it? It's all no, so I think that's... Okay, so... So there's an impression given in the report there that nothing has really happened in terms of control of pathogens. Okay, fair enough. So I've been working with sea lice for a long time now and if you'd looked at the farms when I started there, there were farms that maybe had 100 sea lice or an average of 100 sea lice per fish. So our control compared to the earlier industry is much better now. Even if we look at, say, the period between 2013 and now, there's an impression that we're suddenly getting a lot more sea lice, for instance, these sort of things. But if you look at the actual figures of the recent paper by Hall and Murray, we can see that actually the numbers of sea lice have not been increasing and the reason they're not increasing is because we have a lot more tools at our disposal to help to control these pathogens. But there's a particular problem at the moment with the gills, with the axis of sea lice and these gill problems and what that means is that it's much more difficult to treat the sea lice or the gill problems because the gill problems give the fish physiological problems. Obviously they make it more difficult for the fish to respire effectively and if their respiration is challenged then any handling stress or treatment stress may tend to impact their welfare or health. So in order, and we've had, as I say, there's been a transition where we've had to learn how to deal with these problems but I think the industry is now much better equipped to do that. So we've had a lot of new technologies, new equipment in both to remove sea lice and to treat these gill problems and I think the industry has learned how to cope with those now but I think that in the recent past there's been a transition where people had to learn how to treat them. So we use a range of, we have a range of drugs available for treating sea lice and some of those hydrogen peroxide, for instance, is used to treat both sea lice and amebic gill disease. We can use fresh water again to treat amebic gill disease and some other things. We can also, by moving diagnostics earlier for these gill problems, that is to say able to detect the problem earlier, we're able to treat it much more effectively and the problem and the mortality problems and the health problems are therefore much less serious if we can start to treat them earlier. Richard, I'm going to bring other members in and then come back to you if I may. Gail, I think you've got a question and then fold them. Yeah, thanks, convener. I don't even know if there's statistics on this but we're talking about farmed fish. Do we have any figures of the percentage of mortality and wild fish that's down to infection and disease? Very poor on that. It's really, the ocean is really a black box and the problem is, so it's very difficult to access that. You can look at the number of fish that go out and the number of fish that come back again and that gives you an indication of mortality at sea but in terms of the causes you can identify, that's very hard to do. You can also monitor wild fish for the presence of pathogens but normally that won't necessarily tell you about mortalities. Often we can have pathogens that sit there and don't do any damage and therefore don't have an impact on mortality so some of the viral pathogens are present in wild fish but don't seem to have any effect there. So it's very difficult and the other problem is, unless you get a huge die-off of fish so that they're washing up on beaches, people will never know if fish are dying or not and also they won't be looking at the causes of any deaths on the whole. Fulton. It's just something that you mentioned in your response to Richard Lyle. A minute ago there that quite concerned me now I know that we're talking, we're going to be talking about medicines and such like later on, so I'm conscious I don't want to steal anyone's thunder as such but I was quite concerned when you were talking about resistance developing and I'm assuming that part of that will be antibiotic resistance. That's a big problem worldwide. How widespread is antibiotic use in the farmed salmon and what is the industry doing to tackle resistance both in the salmon but I'm assuming that if fish are taking antibiotics then we're getting them in the food chain as well. To be honest there's very little use of antibiotics particularly in the marine environment because we have very effective vaccines against the diseases that used to require antibiotic treatment the use of antibiotics is tiny and in fact in Scotland I think we use less than the other countries than the other salmon farming countries on the whole so Chile still uses a lot of antibiotics and in fact I think they've not been able to selfish to certain markets because of the level of antibiotics in them Scotland uses almost none because of the use of very effective vaccines so I think that that hasn't been a problem in Scotland. Paul In, you wanted to come in there, Paul. It was just briefly to confirm that although we did discuss in the Environment Committee the problems in getting specific data on antibiotic use in Scotland. The evidence that is available confirms what my colleague has said that antibiotic use in Scottish salmon farming is very low much lower than in the Chile or parts of North America. Thank you. Richard, back to you. To have a number of other questions but you didn't answer one point about creating more pens and having less density of fish in those pens be better off for fish mortality? Yes or no? The densities that are used in the earlier days they had very high densities of farming but work that we did at the Institute and elsewhere established the cut-off points for where health and welfare might suffer and therefore the farms all used relatively low fish density so in terms of the effects on the health of the fish I think the densities are about right and I can't speak for salmon but for other species of fish often they need certain densities to be happy and healthy so there for some fish species they need a certain density to relieve them of stress I don't know of the levels for salmon. For salmon the levels are 15 kg cubic meter but something that is important to consider is because of the natural behaviour of salmon of schooling they will tend to come together and swim together so in other words if you actually have more pens with less fish there will still be swimming together in some area of the pens so this has been a challenge to try actually to have a better usage of the volume that is available but this is their natural behaviour and that's the reason why density matters for their wellbeing but also for the performance because they are not fish that I like to swim in isolation the school together I always wanted to ask and thanks for answering that the clear committee of which I am also a member of reports stated that the overall number of deaths the result of disease, ill health and stress should be masked by the early harvesting of fish with disease or life threatening conditions would you agree that this is the case or not? Causes of death there I don't think that stress can cause other conditions so then if there are say environmental stress it's things like high temperature in particular have a big effect on pathogens and algal blooms et cetera and these will be stressful the more you need to handle fish or treat them the more they'll be subjected to stress and these can have impacts but I'm not sure what you mean by dying of stress really I think that stress is very important on a farm and the farmers do everything they can to keep that low the sea temperature has risen by up to 15% sorry 15 degrees in the last number of years has that had any effect? I think it won't be that high the rise in sea temperature but I think there are rising sea temperatures and those will have an impact so the average sea temperature has gone up by about a degree in the last generation it roughly reflects air temperature around Scotland it still sees temperatures for most of the year are still within the optimum range for salmon growth that was actually a quote from a salmon producer last question what is the view of the risk of disease being transmitted between farmed and wild salmon one of the points is that escapees are mixing with wild salmon is that the case or not? one of the things is that we are farming effectively something that isn't very far from a wild fish and it's in its normal habitat so that the wild fish and the farmed fish will tend to have the same diseases in the first place we're not moving an exotic species into a place that's not been before so it can't bring in exotic diseases it tends to be that the wild fish and the farmed fish have the same diseases the potential then for introducing a disease to the wild population I think is low I think in the reports they highlight incidences where aquaculture in the world has introduced diseases but that tends to be by feeding trash fish or unprocessed trash fish that might carry pathogens to farmed fish obviously that doesn't happen here we have very high quality fish feeds and they're absolutely sterile so we don't have that problem and we're not there are very good controls on movement of salmon about and on the ability to move fish with health problems around in Europe or elsewhere so my impression is that it's not really a big risk and people who have looked at that do not find a high risk of transfer of diseases now the question of sea lice is a slightly different one in that if you have more fish in an area it is true that they're likely to if they have say sea lice rather they may shed more pathogens and that might produce more pressure but I don't think they will introduce new diseases into the wild populations or necessarily that the level of introduction will have a big impact that goes really on a case by case basis thank you so just before we move from that I attended one of the Eclair committee meetings when the issue that Richard has highlighted came up which is the amount of deaths that occur and maybe that's mass by natural harvesting and certainly the SSPO said that when fish show likelihood of getting disease they harvest them to prevent that disease developing so the disease never naturally came to fruition and I think that was the point that Richard was driving at and I'd just like to clarify are you saying that is not the case or are you saying that that is the case and that some of the fish that may be harvested may have disease or they're starting to get disease I don't know the details of that so I certainly can't say that that's not the case but certainly in terms of fish welfare any fish that showed signs of developing a disease that was going to be a welfare problem would be harvested out is my impression I mean emergency harvest is happening I don't think there is any question there and I think this is also a very important duty for fish farmers to make sure that they don't actually keep fish that will have potentially welfare issues I think the main reason why also it is done is that coming back to the environmental side links to the warming climate change potentially is very multifactorial and the gears are extremely important on the fish and the gears are attacked continuously by phytoplontons potentially which is more usual these days by amibas like a GD which is relatively new in Scotland we have to say also which is maybe explaining some of the difficulty and the challenges that the industry is experiencing so a number of different factors are going to have an impact on the inflammation of the gears to the point where fish welfare will become an issue because you wouldn't then treat fish they already have gears that are to a level which they would probably not cope with the treatment so it's not that the fish are sick it's that one of the main organ tissues that they have that help them to have a normal swimming behaviour and be in good health are not in a condition that will allow them to cope with the treatment so that's really where the problem is so then at this stage yeah of course you harvest is important you have to harvest but also in some cases I think it's important to stress out is that the market for salmon is not only big 5, 6 kg salmon there's a market also for smaller fish so you have a proportion of fish that are harvested which has been planned all the way along at 2 kg, 2.5 kg because the consumer, the retailers wants this product so it's quite difficult to actually tease out all these effects an important point from the economic side here is that Scotland is one of relatively small number of companies in the world that can farm salmon because of the sea conditions and if it's the case that the warming of the water is making things more difficult and more expensive it's very good then that you've got companies that are so profitable that can put the money into trying to make things as good as they can so I think some of these points that have been made about diseases and how they're treated and so on the companies have put huge amounts of money in because it's in their interests to protect it and the fact that, for me, they're profitable is very favourable because if they were struggling at the margin to make their business work then they wouldn't be able to afford to spend that kind of money Thank you, we're going to move on to the next question Colin, that's you Can I move the discussion specifically on to the issue of sea lice and ask the panel what your understanding is of the impact of sea lice on first of all farm fish health and wellbeing but also on wild salmon oes as a result of the transfer of sea lice from fish farms James That's probably me It's entirely context dependent really so many farms may have no problems with sea lice at all and therefore there will be no effect on fish health there are sites that have serious problems with sea lice and those will have an impact on fish health but mostly sea lice are under control in Scotland and as I said if you look at the data that's been produced there's been no rise in sea lice so I think there's an impression that there's been a sort of skyrocketing of sea louse numbers but actually if you look at the average that's remained relatively static there and to do that that's very difficult so as I've said because of these gill problems and other problems with treating to manage to stay on top of that is quite a feat and so I think the reports sort of suggest that the industry has just sat back and in fact I think there's been more innovation and more development of tools for treating sea lice in the last say five years than there has been across a much longer period so that they are very much concerned with sea lice and being effective in treating them so they do have impacts on farmed fish and if you get a lot of sea lice on a fish obviously that will be very serious so they can cause lesions on the fish and those lesions will obviously impact welfare directly but it can also be portals of entry ways of other pathogens getting in and also the sea lice have effects on the fish that may help other pathogens so in terms of wild fish is the other question that's really very difficult to as I said before to get a grip on because you don't get to see wild fish mortalities and you don't necessarily get to see wild fish with health challenges so even in the normal course of events without any fish farming wild fish can get very high numbers of sea lice so it would be normal for wild fish even in the absence of any farming to have a prevalence of 70 to 100% that is to say 70% of fish will be infected with sea lice and because wild fish returning to the coast or at least for salmon are quite large they can have large numbers of sea lice on them without impacting their health at all so in terms of working out an effect on wild fish that's extremely difficult to do and either needs an enormous sampling effort which there isn't at the moment or it's very hard to predict that I don't know if I've answered your question there I think you have I don't know if any other members of the panel want to add anything but I was going to come back on specifically the treatment of sea lice but I'll wait to see if other members of the panel wish to respond to the initial question Our, in so far as sea lice is concerned our report, the SRSL report was looking at published scientific evidence so it isn't necessarily completely up to date so far as trends are concerned and to summarise what we found was that we couldn't find definitive evidence in Scotland but in Norway there is definitive evidence that sea lice from farm salmon are having an impact on wild salmon populations If I can read you something this is a Norwegian summary 101 stations investigated along the Norwegian coasts for salmon lice infection 27 indicated moderate to high likelihood of mortality for salmon smolts and 67 stations indicated moderate to high mortality of wild sea trout I should say but that it's a very different issue looking in Norway entirely different circumstances different farming practices so that the evidence doesn't exist for that in Scotland as you say Colin, before we move on Peter wants to come in briefly I'll bring in Peter and then come straight back to you Thanks, in response to your earlier answer James you said that some sites have a huge problem with sea lice and others have none Does that mean that we should be looking at moving these, I abandon in the sites that have a huge problem and moving these when I say a huge problem I should say, I should define that more clearly so then some sites just because of their position or the sea conditions tend to have, especially if they have high freshwater input will have no lice will commonly have lice but it doesn't mean that this is not controllable it's just that they'll tend to be generally infective with lice and other aspects of farming practice may increase or decrease the number of lice high also waters with high high currents tend to get less lice waters where it's much more static you'll tend to get more lice So it wouldn't be a reason to abandon certain sites because of the sea lice issue you would say that it's still controllable So I don't know the sites individually but if there were a serious problem they'd have been abandoned already so in the past there have been sites that have experienced really high louse problems and it tends to be that sites like that get weeded out because they're not productive you have fish welfare problems and they're just not useful to the industry so those have mostly gone now I think in the early years there were sites like that but now those have mostly been weeded out Okay, thank you Yes, just before I bring you in Richard, I think you've got a supplementary and it may help link the two Yeah, just quickly it's been suggested that escaped salmon is infecting wild salmon, is that the case? Are causing disease in wild salmon? Is that the case? I think there's no evidence to show that and I'm not aware of anything like that in Scotland So it's a total fallacy that escaped salmon is infecting wild salmon? Well, the first question is infecting them with what? Well, you tell me, you get an expert, not me! So I can't, so as I say I personally don't know of any evidence of that Thank you Can I come in and ask again with the Norwegian Evidence is that the Norwegians concluded that there was a very low transmission of disease from escaped farm salmon to wild salmon Before I bring you in I think you want to follow up Sorry, you very rude The deputy convener wants to follow up on one question, on an answer that I think you gave Paul I was interested in, you were talking about the correlation between what's happening in Norway and you said that there can't be any comparison between how they do it in Norway and what happens in Scotland What are the differences? How do they do it differently and why can't they be compared? That's fine, do you want to? I didn't, you might want to say something about the differences in practice There is a difference in the environment In Norway it has much bigger, deeper fjords Most Scottish sea locks are comparatively small compared with that Norwegian waters are typically colder particularly those in northern Norway I think that one would have to go into specific details of conditions in particular fjords and particular locks to try and understand whether there were differences, real differences between Scotland and Norway One of the things that I would like to pick up on from this discussion is this very notion of specificity We talk about sea locks But locks, like Scottish rivers are all a very different one from the other It's very important to understand the local conditions to understand what might be responsible for a higher incidence of sea lice or mortality in one lock It would depend not only on average water currents which vary from lock to lock but also what you might think of as a weather in the sea which can change It might happen that a farm is unlucky because it happens to be exposed to infection by a lot of sea lice larvae in a particular week because the main currents are flowing from a particular direction A farm a little way down the coast might pick up an infection in a subsequent year One of the mitigation points I want to make is we need better to understand this marine weather and the way sea lice larvae are transmitted around and reinfect sites There's a difference in scale They have much larger cages on the whole The feeding regimes may be different and what they're trying to get out as a product is different as well I think there are differences for whatever reason in terms of the numbers of escapees entering rivers, which seems to be very small in Scotland but it seems to be very high in Norway so there are differences in the industry There are cages in Norway so this is not throughout the industry but there are cages in Norway that I think would be very difficult to sustain in Scotland just because of the scale of them so I think there are substantial differences Norway produces 15 times more salmon than Scotland so there's some idea about the differences in conditions I think we also need to consider when we say Norway, we have to be careful Norway has an extended coastline and the conditions in the north are very different so it's not really like so much Norway we have to look at geographical areas and even so you have a lot of local differences that will potentially explain why data cannot really be applied directly in Scotland so the temptation to say in Norway has been shown this and then it would apply directly to somewhere on the west coast is high but I think scientifically it's not always the best thing to do OK, I'm coming back to Colin now Can I turn then to how we try to treat the problem, whatever the scale of it is there's different trigger levels at the moment on when the treated industry code of practice is different from the policy from Marine Scotland so is there a scientific basis for a trigger level at which point Salmons should be treated for sea lice? To be honest, even for the there are two levels there one which looks to take action when you get three lice three adult females I should say and one where you have specific action at a level of eight and then the code of good practice has values of 0.5 and one adult female per fish and that 0.5 and one and values like that are similar to those used in the world industry but nowhere was that a scientifically established number that was effectively a handy small integer that lets you easily count it and say well we're keeping lice low now so then if everyone sticks to that number that will tend to keep lice low but as far as I'm aware there's been no scientific support for that number so there are good and bad points to these trigger levels and I should say that in Scotland really they are decision levels and you have to treat and that's very dangerous because if you have to treat every time you see a small number of lice it means you have to repeatedly treat with drugs and because the lice get a resistance to veterinary medicines the more you treat the more likely they are to develop resistance then the sort of mandatory treatment whenever you see a louse is a very dangerous practice the other problem with trigger levels is if you drop to these very low numbers you can't actually truly establish that statistically without sampling a very large number of fish an unsustainably large number of fish every time you want to sample the smaller that cut off point gets so if you drop it to and some countries do to 0.1 adult females per fish say you can realistically sample that and so there's also a balance between the trigger levels and what you can actually truly measure on a farm in real time as it were so it's quite a complex issue that I don't know if that answers your question I think that it does answer I think that the roundabout answer on the scientific basis but it's interesting to see the background on what action can be taken to treat sea lice that the clear committee suggested I've got the quote here there may be greater scope for growing smokes to a larger size in close containment in the RAS and transferring the fish to net pens for the final year of production only and this might reduce the sea lice problem is that proposal do you think something that's feasible and what other action should we be taking to tackle sea lice and I suppose finally do you think the problem itself can be tackled so there's a couple of questions I don't know if you want to talk about the risk so the use of a containment system and recirculation is already done in Norway and it's been coming in Scotland meaning that rather than transferring smolt the sea water adapted to open cages they are transferred to recirculation system in sea water where they are going to be on-grown for a longer period of time and that will be reducing the time the fish spend in open cages which of course reduce also the risk in terms of half challenges so Scotland is also developing in the industry this approach so that's something that is definitely happening I think this is one of the many different strategies that have been developed over the last ten years when you look at what happened since 2002 where there was a report today is a huge amount of innovation and the industry has been extremely proactive in developing a lot of these some of them were a new concept to start with but now they are fully implemented commercially so when we look at the integrated pest management strategy used to be based mainly on things like area management, following so a number of things like this now it would include and chemotherapy times, sorry now it would include also the use of cleaner fish it would use also preventive measures like the use of skirts around the cages it would also include lighting systems that can actually keep fish away from the sea lice which are mainly in the surface layer it would include snorkel I don't know if you heard about this but it's again to keep the fish lower down in the water column I mean it would include so many different technology one of them being tested at the moment is called optical delusing which is using laser system which has been developed in Norway and is now full commercially testing at the moment there is really, I'm losing I'm missing few of them, functional feeds so obviously the field manufacturer has been now developing a lot of new innovative diets that will include additives that can also try to boost mucus production for example and reduce sea lice attachment or boost immune function of the fish it means that they can defend themselves better against some of the disease so I think all of these strategies have been developed over the last ten years some of them are commercially implemented today most farmers are using them some are still not in a proof of concept but still to be refined and every time you bring a new solution or a new technology you also bring some challenges with it and it would take some time in terms of research to make sure that we optimize all the conditions one of the other methodology used at the moment is bath treatment as you know with fresh water some of the companies invested in well boats with reverse osmosis that they can produce their own fresh water which is pretty difficult to do so I think it's quite amazing and the other one is also warm bath treatment which is very very new there's been news in the industry now recently without problems to start with but I think today it's showing that it's working pretty well so I think the innovation in the industry I think is quite fantastic Colin, do you want to follow that up? It's difficult to follow that one if you can just repeat that list again because there's an extensive amount of work going on so are you confident that the problem itself can therefore be tackled given that list that you've provided? It is being tackled successfully at the moment and this idea of integrated pest management where you bring a very diverse range of tools to attack the problem so in the past it might have been simply veterinary medicines were used and then you wouldn't do anything else then more recently veterinary medicines and then farm management tools following area management agreements positioning of cages stocking questions, genetics we didn't really talk about so genetically resistant fish is another thing that's been worked on so all these tools together will have a very good chance of managing the lice and I think we are getting a handle on that but as Hervia says many of these new techniques have only really appeared commercially in the last maybe three to five years and so they're effectively bedding down and the other problem is very rarely do people use one technique they're using five techniques or maybe ten techniques at the same time and at the moment we therefore don't have the statistical evaluation of how one given technique will work and another problem is that farms are very diverse in terms of their environmental context how they run the number of fish on them the whole range of things the farms are very diverse so it's not easy to say well this farm has technology X and this farm has technology Y and this is a superior technology because they both have overlapping technologies and may have individual differences it's very difficult to get those numbers at the moment but that will come out in time but I think at the moment there's a lot of different tools being used and we are working out which are the best ones and also what are the best ways to use them so it's not simply having the tools but knowing when to treat the fish and also as we've said before with these gill problems as well that makes the whole question a bit more difficult I'm just conscious there's quite a lot of questions here still to go through and Colin, I'm going to move on to Gail Ross for the next two questions Thank you, convener I want to move on to more environmental side of things and to quote a paragraph from the Eclare committee's report they say that they're deeply concerned that it appears a precautionary approach has not been and is not being applied to the development of fish farms and in particular farms in marine protected areas or in the vicinity of a priority marine feature is there any research that considers the impact of fish farms located near NPAs or PMFs and do you think that this is an area of concern? That's one for me so we weren't able to find very much in the way of published papers for Scotland the most significant one concerned potential impacts on marl beds which are these meadows of slow growing colcharius red seaweed my feeling is that there probably is a lot of evidence out there resulting from monitoring of the protected areas and features what we need is some way of assimilating synthesising that information to determine whether there is a significant effect on marine protected areas I know here anecdotally from fish farmers that they're beginning to be reluctant to apply for licences in or near marine protected areas simply because they find it too complicated and protracted a business to demonstrate that the farm activity might be compatible so one of the issues about talking marine protected areas in general is that we're talking about a wider range of habitats and species and some of them might be perfectly compatible with salmon farming activity and others won't and some we know something about and some we don't one particular interest of mine is in seagrass meadows which we're probably flourishing around Scotland a hundred years ago seemed to have a lot of them have disappeared in the last two or three generations these may or may not be sensitive to fish farming in Scotland they're certainly a concern in the Mediterranean but I don't think we know enough about them to take that as one specific example so to sum that up I think we should start with an attempt to bring together what is already known about fish farming in relation to protected areas I think that would be a relatively simple task Okay So what considerations do you think should be taken into consideration currently if there's an application for a fish farm in an NPA? Well I think typically the application or the regulators will look at the benthic impact so they'll look at the footprint of the cage on the seabed and basically ask is that going to affect the feature that's protected on the seabed How far do you think concerns of the local community would be taken into consideration? So the local people Well that's getting into the issue of social licence rather than environmental licence now and I actually think it is important to distinguish those two I think in many ways despite some of the evidence that the Environment Committee heard I think a lot of the environmental aspects are reasonably well controlled but there clearly are many issues around the perception of these environmental effects of salmon farming and so one way of putting this is that people interpret these effects depending on their own story of what they expect so for people who see fish farming as a source of employment are very happy to see fish farms there and they'll tell the story about environmental effects in one way but those who appreciate the Highlands as an area of natural beauty and think of it as pristine react much more strongly against fish farming so these are factual things people are behaving in these two distinct ways these oppositional things are getting more intense and we know again from Norway there's also been research on this at the beginning to polarise coastal communities so I think we have to be aware of perception of environmental effects as well as environmental effects itself and I suspect that came through in some of the evidence of the Environment Committee in terms of criticisms of the agencies as to whether they're doing their job or not doing their job Thank you, that's very helpful Can I move on to depositional zone regulation and you'll be aware that SEPA has proposed and consulted on new regulations relating to deposits on the seabed and again to go back to the Eclair Committee report they state that they understand that the new DZR being consulted seems to allow the expansion of fish farms in more exposed locations while requiring the tightening of the monitoring of nutrient waste and these proposals will be brought forward by the end of June this year the committee is also concerned that the new proposed model has not been peer reviewed there's a lack of scientific evidence and published evidence to support the model so what in terms that we will understand are the advantages and disadvantages of the depositional zone regulations proposed by SEPA and how do you think that this would affect the economics and the environmental impact of fish farming in Scotland? I can't answer all of that but I can tell you a bit about depositional problems and I'm not going to be claiming to be completely familiar with the details of the regulations a cage farm in very quiet waters then the fish wastes, the uneaten food and the feces will settle down on the seabed directly underneath the cage so there's an obvious footprint under those conditions and in the early days of fish farming that caused considerable problems because the decaying material gave rise to bubbles of gas that rose to the surface and it really was a public horror and that's been regulated for the last few decades by an allowable zone of effect so in effect SEPA says to a fish farm you're allowed to have an effect on the seabed within a prescribed area two conditions that the effect must be contained and secondly you must not kill everything off in that area so there has to be a minimum number of species remaining in that area so that works very well in quiet waters and that limits the size of the farm in waters where there's little turbulence but there has been a move to try and encourage farms to move offshore into more active, more energetic environments with stronger currents and in the extreme case these currents might be so strong but there is no footprint on the seabed because all the waste material is deposited over a much wider area so the question then becomes on how do we regulate that wider impact and that's where I think the new regulations are aimed at so they could potentially allow for larger farms but in more dispersive waters and with less intense impact on the seabed so the question there is it's a question of the health of the seabed community over wider areas so you might say in the past we've been willing to write off 2% or 3% of the seabed of a lock knowing that once the areas fallowed it will recover and all the evidence is this has little effect on the overall health of the seabed community I think we have a less clear idea what will happen on this larger scale if we have a maximum material which don't make an obvious impact locally but are distributed over a wider area Sorry, Steve, just before you bring in can I institute with a beef follow-up and then I'll bring you in and bring anyone else in that's appropriate In relation to the fecal deposits which is essentially what we're talking about are they a potential disease vector? I guess potentially yes but I don't think in that you if they are depositing feces with pathogens in them chances are that the fish have pathogens and therefore they'd be dispersing pathogens into the environment anyway so I don't think they're more of a disease vector than just having a lot of fish there in the first place they may carry even if the feces got carried down lock so would the pathogens in the water so I don't think they're a particular disease vector in those terms Steve, you wanted to come in on that Just on the economic side if we look at existing production sites and sites that have gone through planning and will be coming into operation in the next few years the feedback that we got from all of the companies that their expectation of these allowed changes will be strongly positive in terms of the sites where they will be able to grow and harvest more fish will outwey the ones quite significantly where they'll be a loss but that's their understanding based on their own modelling I might have misunderstood what you said there could you just repeat that again In relation to the carrying capacity of sites currently that the companies are expecting the new regulations to mean that a number of the current sites plus the sites that are coming on stream in the next few years will give them quite a strong increase in the amount of fish that they can harvest and that will much more than outwey sites where it might work the other way James, I'll bring you in briefly because I want to... but also different technologies are reducing the amount that gets deposited because now in the past you might have just thrown feed in and anything that was uneaten fell to the bottom now there are sort of on-demand systems so you can monitor fish feeding so that all the food or a lot of the food should be eaten in those ways and there are other techniques for the developing techniques to detect whether fish are feeding or not and those are also being used to reduce the best matter that will fall beneath the cages OK, thank you I think I'm going to move on to the next question which is, John Finnie, is you? Thank you, convener. Good morning still is morning panel I'd like to ask about medicines and chemicals please including synthetic chemicals antibiotics and the concerns that have been expressed about the farm the harm to other organisms and indeed the ecosystem now our sister committee expressed concern about a data gap that repeatedly there are gaps in some of the information they also expressed some concerns about SIPA permitting the discharge of priority substances and damaging substances and I'll just give you a quote from their letter to us it's not tenable for SIPA to adopt a position where commercial shellfish species are impacted by day-to-day activities of fish farms so can I ask about research about discharge and the effect on shellfish farming please Well the evidence in the present day does not show any harmful effects of salmon farming on shellfish farming I think what people should have in the back of their mind is history about tributal tin the compound called tributal tin which was used as an anti-filing compound so until about 20 years ago so it was used on fish farm nets it proved to have a very harmful effect on invertebrates causes them to change sex amongst other things and this did the use of this anti-filing compound in some fish farms did have a very harmful effect on shellfish farms that was a documented case it led to a very large change in the regulation so this compound is no longer used but I think that is what is in the back of shellfish farmers minds now knowing the range of compounds that are used in fish farming but the best of my life what could be found out from the published literature is that there is some concern about the compound imamectin which is used in feed as a treatment for sea life on salmon some of the imamectin gets to the seabed through feces and then is redistributed through biological and physical processes and there is beginning to be some concern that it's having diffuse effects on some of the organisms that naturally live in the seabed the crustaceans and worms for example but that seems to be confined to the community on the seabed depths of 20, 30, 40 meters and most shellfish farms are either seashore oysters in intertidal waters or mussels on ropes going down perhaps to 10 meters If I may would you have concerns then if you're saying all be at 20, 30 meters down it seems that the ecosystem is being impacted so it's depends how precautionary I I wanted to be I would say I think there's an urgent need to get more evidence about this the one study a detailed statistical investigation has been commissioned carried out by funding from the Scottish Agricultural Research Forum and that did lead to some suggestions for other correlations between decline in the benthic community some distance from fish farms and the amount of mmectin used on the farm but one of the difficulties with that is the nature of the data that was being compared was not collected for the purpose of looking at the effect of mmectin so we probably do need a proper study of the effects of mmectin on benthic communities thank you for that and all the committees I've sat on and here I've never heard of academics I don't suggest that there will be better place for more research and perhaps not surprising but has this been mapped out the gaps that do exist in all these issues that people have concerns about maybe that research could allay some concerns but people have genuine concerns and indeed you've expressed some yourself is there any template of what would require to be done to fill the gaps in the research well I think there is in the environment committees there is a summary of the areas that need more research in relation to salmon farming my my summary broadly yeah yeah yeah I think I think you might you might also ask the Scottish agricultural research forum to give you evidence on this because they are the body which has tried to bring together funding sources from government and industry and identify what areas of research are priority so they have a small budget so they are strongly focused on what they see as the priority areas I think that there are also areas of research that are not identified in here so really I think it needs a larger discussion with academia and industry and indeed government and NGOs to identify the key gaps in knowledge that need to be filled but as you can see from the report especially for Scotland there are many gaps that do need to be filled I think if I could also add the Scottish Aquaculture Innovation Centre has actually been providing a critical link between industry and academics around key concerns was impact and challenges in the industry so there's been quite a lot of different issues that have already been mapped out and some of these are already being researched today through a number of co-funded projects through SAIC and the industry and the other one is also there's a big initiative started recently supported by BBSRC and NERC called Arts UK which is focusing on aquaculture which is bringing all scientists pretty much around the UK together around aquaculture and salmon farming and trying to identify all the gaps in the knowledge that need to be addressed at the level of the production and also the nutrition so a lot of the challenges that we're discussing about there's a lot of meetings and forum happening to try to really make sure that we can create a critical mass to address this Thank you very much Can I just admit to struggling with time now which is probably because I've let everyone say as much as they want so I'm going to have to be a bit tighter on time I apologise for that Donald you wanted to ask a brief question and then I'm going to go on to Peter Chapman I've just asked the panel members to to try and work with me I have tried to sign a couple of times and you've studiously ignored me probably I'm going to have to ask you not to ignore me now Donald Thank you convener One of the concerns of the Eclare committee was the fact that fresh water ecosystems perhaps deserved a little more focus Your report quite plainly focused on the marine environment in the majority of the areas that it looked at but I just wondered if you had any observations on environmental impacts in fresh water systems Everyone's looking the other way Paul I'm going to let you speak on that and then I'm going to move on to Peter's question because I see no-one else wants to do, Paul I'll just say as a marine biologist I have no direct expertise One of the concerns in fresh water is the supply of fresh water particularly for hatcheries which require a reasonably large and constant supply of fresh water even recirculating systems have to replace some of their water each day and that in itself might be an issue that needs to be taken account of particularly in the context of the water framework and the Scottish law Donald, I think we're going to leave that there and I'm going to ask Peter to lead on the next question and Peter My question is about cleaner fish, lump suckers and wrath an increase in demand for both these species The direct question is how effective are these species in addressing sea lice and the increase in demand for these species can we farm them or if we can't farm them what effect is it having on the wild populations of these fish and that we now catch them in large numbers to feed this industry Yes, we can definitely farm them There are some large co-laborative projects that have been running over many years I'm not saying there's no challenges Both Ballan wrath a lump sucker are entirely new species for aquaculture The process was about fast tracking domestication which took a long time in other species but a lot of progress has been made over the last seven years Maybe I could give you the example that it's only in 2013 so less than five years ago that the first eggs were obtained in captive rootstock in commercial hatchery So it's only from less than five years which is actually quite small considering all the different things that you need to look at So a lot of work has been done in how to feed them in how to breed them in how to keep them healthy and now a lot of focus is still looking at some of the pathogens that are bacterial infections that need vaccines to be developed There's already vaccines that have been prototyped, that have been testing at the moment So I guess without going too much in details yes it can be farmed like most of the marine species that have been farmed Atlantic cod when it was produced in the UK some of the hatcheries were producing two million, two and a half million juveniles and they were healthy So there's no reason why we're not going to be able to produce enough farm healthy grass to supply the industry Now the question will be when and I know this is I'm not even going to try to tell you when I think it needs a bit more time because there are still a few challenges regarding robustness of these fish before they're deployed that need to be addressed So I mean in the meantime we're catching wild grass and lump sucker and quite affected the feel population of these fish So I cannot really comment myself too much on the wild fish impact What I can say is that we're not in a position where we will or the industry will have farm grass and farm lump sucker This is a reality, it's already been going So a percentage of the total cleaner fish that have been supplied especially over the last two years and this year is coming from farming operation Now the aspiration for the industry is to be able to have a full supply from commercial farm cleaner fish as soon as possible and as I said it will probably take another couple of years at least but we are already very well advanced and when I say we is because this is a very good example of collaboration between industry and academia and at the institute we've been actually working quite a lot with a lot of the farmers to develop all these protocols and understand the biology of the species Okay, so the basic question then is how effective are these cleaner fish in addressing the sea life issue So this is what we started our research back seven eight years ago, there was the key questions everybody had concerned are they really effective, they are extremely effective Barnan Ross is actually very impressive in the way he can pray on the sea life Now it doesn't mean that they are all the time effective when they are deploying cages because there are many other factors that can impact on the fish That's where the environmental factors can come in and it took a long time also to understand what are the requirements of the species when they are in the cage So now a lot of new methods have been developed to provide shelters for example to provide feeding that is appropriate for the species and understand their behaviour So yeah, they are very very effective Barnan Ross is extremely effective and we have done a lot of experimental tank challenge demonstrating and publishing this now for many years and cleaner fish also can be very effective but maybe not as much as Barnan Ross and this is explaining why the ratio of lumsacre that I introduced in cages is a bit higher than what you would do for Barnan Ross The other thing to consider sorry, I'm just going to finish there is that you have temperature requirements that are different or preference So lumsacre are extremely active during winter, cold months while Barnan Ross are very active and efficient during summer months So the two species together provide actually very good biological control in the industry and you have signed in the industry that's the last thing I will say which works, which full cycle production cycle have been done without any treatments chemotherapy treatments whatsoever just by the use of the cleaner fish Thank you and I am going to stop you there The next question is from Mike Rumbles and then the one after will be from you Fulton Thanks again I'm going to focus on the appropriateness of the regulatory system for the industry and I was most impressed by the environment committee's report 80 page, very effective report I just want to quote you a couple of sentences from it and I'd like your response to this bearing in mind about the appropriateness of the current regulatory system The committee is not convinced the sector is being regulated sufficiently or effectively There are too many regulators and too little effective regulation The committee is not convinced SIPA or any other agency is effectively monitoring the environmental impact of salmon fisheries The committee is also not convinced that the regulations, protocols and options for enforcement and prosecution for the sector are appropriate and being appropriately deployed Those are very strong sentiments of the members of the environment committee and I'd like your reaction to it please I'm going to ask Paul and James to answer that particular comment Paul, would you like to kick off on that please? They are strong comments I'm an ecologist I'm not an expert in regulation I have been co-ordinating a European programme called Aquaspace One of the conclusions from that is that all across Europe there's a general feeling that regulation is too complex and too time consuming so clearly from both sides but both sorts of perception there is a need to improve on regulation both to make it effective but also to make it simple and efficient It has to cope not only with what I'm interested in ecological effects on the environment it also has to be able to deal with public perceptions of what the issues are and I think this means that we need the regulators as the police but we need to bring the public more into the process of monitoring to involve them in what we call in the report adaptive management so I'm trying to distinguish between whether the regulators are doing a good job and what the public perception of them is James in particular areas in terms of oversight I can't really speak but I think one of the key things for the salmon industry is the availability of treatments for sea lice and for other pathogens and I think there needs to be more careful consideration of what the best outcomes for the environment are in terms of allowing the use as well as preventing the use of drugs so if you can protect the environment by using a drug that is nominally more harmful or give longer protection to the environment these wider questions need to be engaged with and I think that's not really being done from my point of view at least Can I just ask would you agree to the specific question members of the environment committee are not convinced that CEPA is effectively monitoring the environment impact on salmon fisheries do you agree with that or do you disagree just yes or no from all four of you would be very helpful I think it's not very simple There's always three answers yes, no and abstain that's what we're given in the chambers say I'm delighted if you want to give one of those three answers as you've been directed I think there is a lot of monitoring what we don't do is synthesise the results of that monitoring the agencies don't do that anymore they used to I don't think they have the resources to do it properly now so that's a qualified yes would that be right James do you want to abstain yes now I think in some areas there is too much activity and in some areas too little so as a general picture I can't make a single statement I'm not going to put you all through the pain of that I'll be in the same position so I'll be tempted to say no, not because I don't agree entirely with it I just think that it's maybe a simplification in some areas there's actually quite a lot maybe even too much in some other areas maybe not enough and the level of the amount of data that is generated is so high that maybe it becomes difficult to look at them properly Steve, do you want to abstain so I'm afraid you've got some of your answers we need to move to the subject which is never far from everyone's mind at the moment Fulton Thanks, convener, as Steve mentioned earlier and you have a promise that we would come back to the issue of Brexit and here we are so just to keep the question brief the most significant implications of Brexit on the the salmon industry I think there are two aspects to this one is exports the impact that Brexit might have on exports the second is the one in terms of labour supply I think if we take the export one if we look at current productions or relatively modest increases in production that might happen in the next few years in relation to world markets there shouldn't be an issue to continue to sell all of the salmon that we can produce but it might mean or is likely to mean a slight reduction in the profits of the companies so for example rather than selling to France where some of the premium products as I mentioned earlier are sold it means selling to another country and not making quite as much margin on it that could have a small effect on employment it's been really interesting that the Scottish Government of twice announced redundancy programmes purely based on profitability of the overall company so we'll need to reduce our UK staff by such and such a number because we want to get back to the profit level and then they've tried to work out how to do it so there is a sum link but mainly the impact I think on employment will be small a different scenario if we look further ahead it does manage to double or even have an increase of 50% on its current level most of that will be exports because the home market will have been saturated by that time so the challenge of Brexit and the way that the international companies manage it will grow if there's that increase but by the time that increase happens we'll know a lot more than we do at the moment and the companies will have their mechanisms but I think the most stable thing for the Scottish industry really is this question of demand exceeding supply and when you look at the growth of companies like countries like China and others where more and more people are buying products like salmon that is likely to more than compensate for the Brexit effect as it were in exports perhaps more worrying though is the labour supply one particularly in processing but in some of the other activities as well that are relatively poorly paid where the working conditions are not necessarily that popular for the Scottish workforce there's a lot of worry there that jobs will be lost there's been quite a lot of product as we've shown in our report in processing in recent years and the momentum for that will grow with Brexit impacts on labour supply so we'll have more automation more use of robots and such like but it will help to sustain those operations even if employment does fall but if we're looking at just from our own perspective in Scotland in terms of the employment of Scottish people then those mechanisms those jobs into the longer term there'll be less requirement for bringing people in from other countries but I mean nobody knows of course what mechanisms are going to come about my own view as an economist looking across the board is that we'll have more and more people coming from African countries to do a lot of the jobs the lower paid less popular jobs that people say from Romania are filling at the moment will come along because they always have done if you look at it over the last 100 years we've always had inflows of workers whether it's from Ireland or the Commonwealth there are always mechanisms that are always found but there could be a transition period on that one I think on the farms there's been a fairly interesting trend not major but there's been more overseas people working on farms 20 years ago I would put that down to a large extent to what I found in other sectors which is an increased reluctance of not just Scottish but British people wanting to work outside whether we're looking at forestry, nurseries fishing, agriculture construction people more and more want to work inside even though the rates of pay aren't necessarily even quite as good so there would be some impact again on the on the farms I mean farms only maybe employ a tenth of the impact in Scotland of salmon so it's a bit less important than some of the other sectors but I think this aspect again there of who will come in to fill those jobs and it's not easy to put people up I mean there's problems in a lot of the outlying areas where the jobs are most needed where there isn't housing even for local people who might want to work so there is an issue of accommodation of people Thanks I think there was a very detailed response on the possible implications of Brexit and I thank you for that and I know we don't have time to discuss it today but I was concerned about one of the things that you mentioned about working conditions for people particularly I think you said today but I hope that it's something that we can maybe look at more in the committee because to me and I'm sure everybody around the table agrees it doesn't matter where you come from the working conditions should be spot on so I would, to be the convener's permission like to see maybe that coming into the question in the future I've noted that comment and we'll see if we can work on that Thanks very much for the response I have one more question and we are short of time so I think we've had quite a full answer if I may I'd just like to try and wrap this up with a final question in the sense that in 2016 my understanding is there were 163,000 tonnes of salmon produced the target is in 2020 to go to 200,000 tonnes of salmon and to 2034,000 tonnes of salmon and I notice the SSPCO are saying that they are determined to see this growth achieved without detriment to our wider environment my question to each of you very briefly if I may are you convinced that these targets can be met without detriment to the wider environment or are you not and I'm very happy to start off with Paul on that Well yes but there will need to be radical changes in the way both the farming is managed and regulated So very brief to sink down to James can you match that I can't match it I think yes it can be achieved but there's obviously a lot of problems that needs to be solved to achieve that but I think the industry is working very hard to do that and so yes Would you like to go on? Yes I believe it can also be done there has to be done sustainably so some of the challenges that are being addressed today will have to be addressed tomorrow in order to meet this growth Thank you and Steve The first point here is that the industry has been talking about 200,000 tonnes for 15 years now and haven't got there yet they would have expected to have got there long before if you go back even 10 years our analysis based on all the different work that we did was that a 50% growth was much more likely than 100% growth in other words getting more like 300,000 tonnes if everything is favourable then getting to 400,000 that seems to us to be hugely probably over optimistic but in relation to achieving that the majority of it probably is going to have to be from developing sites further offshore which we've got larger and can get larger volumes now if technology moves into that and enables that to happen that could generate a lot of additional farms in these more offshore areas and that could get us to that target the other thing that is of interest I think there in relation to a number of the points that have been raised today is that if those sites become much more economic there will be less need to operate in some of the more onshore sites and inshore sites as it were which are unpopular in communities and one could see more of these sites closing because some of these sites have closed already in the last 10 years because if technology and economics work the majority of this production is going to be further offshore so I think a lot of the issues that have been discussed will kind of fade away a bit because you've got this different scenario thank you very much I'd like to thank you individually Paul, James, Harvard and Steve for your evidence today it's been extremely useful very detailed and I appreciate your succinct answers as the end as we became pressured for time but thank you very much and I'd now like to close the meeting as that concludes committee business today thank you