Organic salmon certifier forced to share findings amid claims consumers misled

Campaigners have forced the Soil Association to reveal its salmon farm inspection reports, amid claims that certifying the farmed fish as “organic” is misleading to consumers.The Soil Association’s Organic scheme, the UK’s oldest and most widely recognised organic certification, defines organic farming as “using methods that benefit our whole food system, from people to planet, plant health to animal welfare.”But critics say its Aquaculture Standard allows use of chemical treatments, including pesticides known to be toxic to marine life, and methods that are damaging to the environment and the welfare of the farmed fish.After a two-day hearing, the information tribunal ruled the charity’s certification arm must share its inspection reports with WildFish, a campaign group that has claimed labelling farmed salmon organic amounts to “unacceptable greenwashing”.“Inspection reports go to the heart of whether organic certification of salmon farming is credible at all,” a WildFish spokesperson said. “The fact that their disclosure was resisted, and had to be tested all the way to tribunal, only reinforces why independent scrutiny is essential.”WildFish says that certified “organic” salmon are produced using a very similar method to uncertified farms: reared in open-net cages, with the waste from the fish and chemicals used to treat them discharged directly into the surrounding environment.A 2023 report by Wildfish detailed how one organic-certified salmon farm had been treated with the chemical pesticide Deltamethrin – which is used to kill sea lice but is also highly toxic to lobsters and other marine invertebrates – twice in 12 months. It also documented the use of formaldehyde, a known human carcinogen, on several occasions to treat fungal infections on fish at organic farms.The tribunal’s decision this week is the culmination of an 18-month battle for disclosure, after WildFish first requested to see Soil Association’s reports under environmental information regulations in May 2024.Soil Association Certification had argued that it was not a public body and so any legal disclosure obligations lay with its delegating authority, the environment department (Defra).It appealed against an initial decision by the Information Commissioner’s Office, but this was dismissed by the independent first-tier tribunal – a decision that could have wider implications for other control bodies operating in the organic food production sector.Dominic Robinson, the chief executive of Soil Association Certification, said the organisation had not sought to withhold information. He said it was contracted to provide the information to Defra, which in turn determined the appropriate disclosure.“It is the right reporting channels for the information, not the reporting of the information itself, that is in question and that we seek to ensure is clearly set out,” he said.The Soil Association is now holding a public consultation on tightening its standards for organic salmon, after last year warning it could withdraw from the sector unless progress was made on environment and welfare by summer this year.