Chamber and committees

I am absolutely not deep diving, convener, and I will stick to the points, but if evidence is given to the committee that I think is fundamentally flawed, I must challenge it, otherwise it will not be on the official record.

Annette, I hope you are in Inverness in that wonderful centre that I visited the other day. I want to probe on antibiotic resistance and chemical resistance. Antibiotic use leads to antibiotic resistance. Are we seeing that in salmon farming, and is that a factor of increased use of chemicals or is it something that we should not worry about?

Are you saying they cannot?

Yes.

I will have to wait to read your report.

I have a final question. I was corrected by the industry: between 2017 and 2021, antibiotic use went up by 168 per cent. It dropped back in 2022, but deaths continued to rise—there were 36,000 tonnes of deaths in 2022. I have not yet collated all the 2023 figures. Have you heard of antibiotic resistance and lice treatment resistance? Does it concern you? That question is for Sean Black and Rachel Mulrenan, in particular.

Thank you, convener. I could go on all morning, but I will spare you and the committee that. Thank you for indulging me.

I share your concern. If oxytetracycline was being used as an antibiotic—it is used in humans and there is resistance being built up—that would cause me concern.

That is because they are particularly vulnerable when they are juveniles.

So, if we are going to deal with the issue—which is that wild fish interests believe that sea lice affect the juveniles going out to sea—the only way that we are going to be able to prove whether sea lice kill them is by trapping them after they have gone through a heavily sea-lice-infected area to see whether they do. To say that there is no evidence that they do not die is based on no research at all.

I will come to wild salmon. I am trying to identify whether, if sea lice get on a fish in sufficient numbers, they will compromise that fish by allowing in other diseases that could kill them, such that sea lice do kill fish.