Chamber and committees

I am conscious of the time. A few members still want to ask questions.

I am conscious that we are halfway through and nearly completely out of time. I must ask the panel to try to keep their answers specifically to the questions they are asked. The next question comes from Alasdair Allan.

I will bring in Rachel Mulrenan, who wants to address some of the points from your first question.

You quoted an astonishing figure of over 80 per cent mortality. Where does that figure come from? What does that actually relate to?

Can I ask a simple question? What are the indicators of fish welfare when you decide whether welfare is good, poor or otherwise? Surely, mortality and health are the key indicators.

We will stick to committee members asking the questions, or it will turn into a debate, which is not the purpose of today’s meeting.

Emma Harper wants to ask about comparisons.

One of the statements that you just made illustrated the issue that we have. You quoted the mortality of X million fish, but you did not contextualise that or provide any information about whether that is proportionate or acceptable. We continue to hear that message. We are not sure whether 1.5 million fish dying is reasonable or can be accepted. Understanding the context is one of the issues that the committee has. For example, a 1 per cent mortality, or more than that, in a beef herd might be significant, but a 5 per cent mortality in the aquaculture industry might not be significant compared with other types of farming. With situations like that, does the public get enough information to make educated decisions on whether aquaculture is making progress?

Thank you. That is a good place to start. I move to a question from Ariane Burgess.

To conclude this section, I want to put it into perspective. As a former farmer, I remember that we used to inject our calves with selenium to give their immunity a little boost. We used to give them an infectious bovine rhinotracheitis injection, or they would get bovine viral diarrhoea, and, on the back of that, there was quite a high use of antibiotics. We were treating conditions that were the result of various infections. Over time, however, the livestock industry has reduced the use of antibiotics quite significantly—for instance, as a prophylactic treatment for dry cows with mastitis. We have seen a dramatic drop in the use of antibiotics in other types of farming and food production. Are we seeing the same progress in aquaculture?

This inquiry and the report that we will be doing are all about progress and whether we are making progress. In agriculture, the advances in the area of inoculations and vaccinations have had the knock-on effect of reducing the use of antibiotics. Are we seeing the right direction of travel in aquaculture? Are we on the right path to reducing the use of antibiotics—not Ivermectin, which is a wormer for cattle, but the one that is used for fish? Are we seeing progress leading to the reduction in the use of these types of chemicals?