PINK PONG AT THE BLUE FOOD INNOVATION SUMMIT
21.05.2024
⬆️ The game of Pink Pong is cruel and relentless but not as cruel and relentless as salmon farming. Photo credit: Guy Reece.
After joining speakers and attendees at today’s Blue Food Innovation Summit at the 5⭐️ Hilton Hotel, two Salmon Heads enjoyed a ruthless game of Pink Pong outside the summit.
PINK PONG is a game that highlights the ugly cruelty of the Scottish Salmon industry and the complicity of the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), supermarkets and the numerous speakers at today’s Summit, who, as the Salmon Heads batted the farmed salmon issues between themselves, were holed up inside the conference spinning industrial fishing’s greenwash.
The pink ‘PINK PONG’ table was inscribed with ‘SALMON FARMING, SALMON CRUELTY. BACKED BY THE RSPCA.’ The PONG is provided by the eerie scent of dead salmon wafting from supermarket aisles, and from inside the Blue Food Innovation Summit.
The fate of the Ocean depends on us all.
We’ll let you know what we’re doing to help.
Mortality figures for farmed salmon continue to rocket at a disgusting rate. Latest available figures show production in 2022 was 18% less than the previous year because of even more salmon dying in agony. Deaths from 2023 are still worse, 17.4 million salmon dying last year according to the Fish Health Inspectorate. The RSPCA have obligingly covered this up, preferring to pocket money from the salmon farming industry for the animal welfare ‘assurance’ labelling we see across all Scottish farmed salmon products. There are even wild allegations that injured and diseased fish are entering the human food chain in products like smoked salmon and ready-made fish pies. Supermarkets like Tesco and M&S are not sufficiently transparent with their salmon sourcing supply chains to dispel the fishy pong of these allegations and reassure shoppers that their dinner wasn’t already dead before slaughter.
supermarkets might already be selling diseased salmon
In 2022 the Scottish salmon industry produced 169,194 tonnes of farmed salmon; 36,199 tonnes less than in 2021, due to agonised dying salmon caused by crowded salmon cages, salmon lice and careless (or no) animal welfare standards. The dodgy RSPCA farmed salmon welfare standards are said to be drawn up by the salmon farmers themselves. Because of public disgust at the poor state of salmon welfare the industry has recently applied to rebrand themselves from ‘Scottish Farmed Salmon’ to just ‘Scottish Salmon,’ in a cunning plan to confuse consumers who have realised farmed salmon is cruel and disgusting. How can supermarkets like TESCO give credibility to the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC) and RSPCA, two organisations who both make money by endorsing fisheries which practise animal cruelty and routinely destroy marine habitats and, by overfishing their fish stocks, spread hunger through the global South?
⬆️ The Olympic standard Pink Pongers head home each carrying a trophy. Photo credit: Guy Reece.
The game of PINK PONG is played by tinting dying fish pink–and selling any survivors, also dyed pink, to gullible supermarkets like TESCO, Waitrose and M&S who pass on this dreadful product to their unknowing customers. It’s enough to turn your stomach and give you the salmon ‘ick’. RSPCA Assured labelling claims it sets “higher farm animal welfare standards”, but specifies no limit on the maximum number or percentage of fish dying on its ‘certified’ farms. Farmed salmon from farms with mortality as high as 74% a month can be sold with an RSPCA-assured “high welfare” label in UK supermarkets (Wildfish, 2023).
The fate of the Ocean depends on us all.
Our interventions depend on your support.
The Salmon Heads are here to call out the RSPCA on its cruelty-endorsing mission, to flag to the Charity Commission the RSPCAs dereliction of its duty towards the suffering of fish, and to highlight the RSPCAs shocking neglect of animal welfare to its funders. Funders who are totally unaware of how significant the RSPCA endorsement of salmon farming is to the continuation of mass cruelty.
THE RSPCA ENDORSES ANIMAL CRUELTY
If you want to help spread the word about how the RSPCA is actively aiding animal cruelty why not download and print our RSPCA Fish Pie recipe card? You can print it at your local printer and add it to the racks of magazines and leaflets at your local supermarket.
Ocean Rebellion demands a moratorium on the expansion of new and existing farms, as a prelude to the rapid winding down and ending of sea cage salmon farming.
Ocean Rebellion recognises that a just transition is necessary for fish farms workers and demands the Scottish Government follows the encouraging steps taken by British Columbia and Norway, by providing training and investment in coastal communities, to achieve this.
The Scottish Government must concentrate on a new policy which has marine health as its only measure of success. It should replace foreign corporate power with West Coast people power. And it must represent the many forms of marine life who actually make the ocean a home.