Chamber and committees

Okay. I have just a final supplementary—

I am going to ask a question about good practice, but I want to put in a thought about farming and why we are not paying so much attention to it. My sense is that we have very good practices on the land in animal welfare and that type of thing, whereas understanding what we are trying to do in the marine space is new to us.

In terms of good practice, one of the key findings in your report is that there is good practice in Norway, where the Norwegian research council provides for

“four aquaculture-relevant funding themes every year”

and you say that that could be replicated by the UK Research and Innovation research councils. You have made that recommendation and it seems as though that could be a way of dealing with fragmentation. I got the impression that there is a bit of a competition for funding if different bodies want to look at a particular area. Could you expand on that a little bit more?

Okay. You are saying that adopting approaches that are taken in Norway would be a good thing for Scotland.

Thank you.

Convener, could I ask a clarifying question?

You mentioned activity ranging from blue-sky thinking research to consultancy work. When you say “consultancy work”, what is in your mind?

Thank you.

So, you are not obliged to monitor cleaner fish deaths.

Okay. Thanks very much.

That is helpful in understanding what you mean by no deterioration. Do you think that the no deterioration, stand-still approach is consistent with the recommendation by the REC Committee that sea lice trigger levels

“should be challenging and set a threshold that is comparable with the highest international industry standards”?