Disease sweeps Scottish salmon farms

The deadly infectious disease Infectious Pancreatic Necrosis (IPN) may have spread through up to 70% of Scotland's salmon farms according to reports.

The Herald claims that the Scottish Executive has set up a working group to tackle the spread of IPN which has found that the disease is spreading through marine sites across most of the region. The report claims that little can be done to curb the spread, as there is currently no vaccine and current movement restrictions aren't adequate to prevent it from spreading.

Don Stanford, Managing Director of the Salmon Farm Protest Group told The Herald that the epidemic was the foot-and-mouth of the salmon farming world.

However, in a recent report on FishUpdate.com the industry body Scottish Quality Salmon (SQS) has hit back at the Herald's report, saying that it is ill-founded.

The SQS told FishUpdate.com that IPN is found in both wild and captive fish and that there's no evidence to show that farmed fish are transmitting the disease to wild ones.

A spokesman for SQS told FishUpdate.com: "IPN has been known about for around 20 years and monitoring has been in place for many years.

"IPN is ubiquitous in the marine environment and other marine fish, including wild salmon, can also carry the IPN virus.

"For example, if you take a swab from the palm of your own hand and analyse it, you would find many types of bacteria, but they are not causing you any harm."