SHARK ATTACK

Pop star turned eco-activist slams salmon farms and government over welfare standards which means a fish dies every 2 seconds

-  DAN VEVERS

EX-ROCKER Feargal Sharkey has blasted Scotland's farmed salmon sector as a "treacherous industry" and claimed it is "decimating" wild fish populations.

The Undertones singer, now an eco campaigner, compared the £600million sector to the 1960s tobacco industry and blasted SNP ministers for inaction.

It comes after the Scottish Government recently launched a new "Vision for Sustainable Aquaculture" strategy to support the sector which Sharkey dismissed as "vacuous nonsense".

Speaking to the Record, he claimed the Holyrood administration was on "the wrong end of history" and "desperately short-sighted" by backing the industry.

Despite farmed salmon's status as Scotland's top food export, activists have long warned of poor welfare standards for fish, claiming overcrowding has allowed lice and disease to spread.

There were 16.5million deaths on salmon farms in 2022 - one every two seconds.

Sharkey insisted its impact on our wild salmon populations is "blatantly" clear with stocks at "crisis" levels.