This article appears as part of the Winds of Change newsletter.

People love to eat salmon. I know that, and I have enjoyed a fair few plump pink steaks in my time, though vanishingly rarely now. I also understand that when you enjoy eating something you don’t necessarily want to hear the bad news about it – like the fact that there are high mortality rates on the farms, or that lice, amoebic gill disease and plagues of jellyfish are a continuing problem.

There’s a hand over the ears 'la la la' response to that kind of bad news. It was there, for instance, in a reaction to my recent series on salmon farming, which said, "I can't read any of these. I've just eaten some lovely salmon. I want to eat more lovely salmon."

And I get it. Demand and desire matter. I understand how salmon, particularly when cooked well, or delicately smoked, can be delicious. In a world full of so many unhealthy treats it also has a story of being a healthy one.

That appeal is what has made it the biggest UK food export year on year, and what also keeps the people of Scotland and the UK, plucking it from their supermarket shelves, whether as salmon steaks, salmon wellington, fishcakes, smoked, hot smoked and other various forms.

Eight innovations reshaping Scottish salmon farming’s future

British Columbia are phasing out salmon farms. Why won’t Scotland?

Charity warns of ‘serious gaps’ in salmon farm mortality reporting

Demand is at the heart of salmon farm expansion and production in Scotland. It, and the money it brings, is the biggest argument for supporting he industry. This is a protein that people want to eat and also one that, in a world in pursuit of Net Zero and battling climate change, makes........

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