Scottish salmon producers struggle to meet demand fuelled by Chinese
Meeting Chinese demand for the fish part of deal first minister signed to be the preferred supplier
The Scottish salmon farming industry is struggling to meet a controversial target to rapidly increase production to help feed China's growing appetite for fresh and smoked salmon.
It is central to a major deal to become one of China's preferred suppliers, struck in January 2011 by Alex Salmond, the first minister, just as China signed parallel deals to lend two giant pandas to Edinburgh zoo and take a major financial stake in the Grangemouth oil refinery.
In the weeks before that agreement, the Beijing government had dropped Norway as China's preferred salmon supplier in retaliation for the decision by the Oslo-based Nobel organisation to award the Nobel peace prize in 2010 to the jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.
Scottish ministers soon promised that Scotland's fish-farming industry would rapidly expand production to 210,000 tonnes a year by 2020, to help meet Chinese demand. That is equivalent to China's total salmon consumption in 2009, which has since grown substantially.
Salmond starts his fourth trade visit to China on Saturday where he will again promote Scottish salmon and seafood.
Before leaving, the first minister said salmon exports to east Asia had leapt from 2 per cent to 19 per cent of all overseas sales already this year: more than half has been sold to China, with sales there now worth £20 million (HK$248.8 million) annually.
Soon after the Chinese salmon deal was unveiled in 2011, British anglers said they were horrified by its implications for wild fish stocks, because of the impact of sea lice infestation on wild salmon, and the risks of escaped farmed salmon having cross-bred with wild fish.
Partly in a bid to defuse those attacks, two-thirds of the Scottish industry has recently joined the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) eco-labelling and accreditation scheme, binding them to accept stricter environmental standards on water quality, pollution and damage to the wider marine environment.
Lang Banks, Scotland director for the environment group WWF, a co-founder of the ASC, said that a rush to hit the 2020 target could threaten those new industry commitments. "It's very hard to see how the rapid expansion in farmed salmon production being expected by ministers can realistically be met without the industry having to backtrack on their pledges, under the Aquaculture Stewardship Council scheme, to reduce their impacts on the environment," Banks said. "There is a real danger that this government target could drive Scotland's salmon farmers to become less sustainable, not more."