‘An environmental and welfare disaster’: British salmon loses its organic status

This week the Soil Association withdrew certification from organic salmon after 20 years. What went wrong?

The first haul of farmed salmon in Britain was a relatively modest 14 tonnes, produced off the west coast of Scotland near Fort William in 1971.

For Unilever, the vast multinational that pioneered salmon farming, it was a triumph after years of experimenting with how to cage fish, battle against diseases and cope with the wild weather. Unilever had spotted in the 1960s that farming salmon, which until then was caught wild and remained a relative luxury, would create a mass market, lower costs and provide steady profits. By 1976, it had expanded into three Scottish sites producing 116 tonnes of fish each year.