Scottish environment minister Michael Russell is all geared up to conduct an independent review into the recent outbreak of a highly infectious disease at a Shetland salmon farm, which he blamed on poor industry practice. He made the announcement during a visit to the islands to look into the outbreak of Infectious Salmon Anaemia (ISA) earlier this month.
It is also informed that Russell had met with the Shetland salmon industry and has cleared that the industry had to improve its standards of husbandry. Russell also said that the government has a code of good practice and quite frankly if they had followed it to the letter we wouldn’t have this problem. He told that the authority needs to realise their practice must improve.
Russell is of view that the ISA problem appeared to have been contained, and if that was the case the next step was to eradicate it. The entire incident would then be thoroughly investigated by a review panel which he intended to appoint shortly. He opined that the ministry will undertake a full independent assessment of the outbreak and how it came about and I hope it will show us some lessons for the future.
