A new campaign by Project Slingshot aims to open shoppers’ eyes to the false advertising of the Scottish farmed salmon industry, which is as riddled with lies as the poor fish are with lice.
Having last time turned the spotlight on Pret A Manger for failing to live up to its promise to stop using fast-growing “Frankenchickens”, the group is now asking Marks & Spencer to stop stocking farmed salmon. The retailer has been working for the past 20 years with Scottish Sea Farms, which, like the other three major suppliers of Scottish farmed salmon, is foreign-owned, in this case by two Norwegian companies.
In a video to accompany the campaign, the naturalist Chris Packham plays an Edwardian gentleman enjoying a picnic in bucolic Scotland, circular fish farms visible in the sea loch behind him. But the salmon in his hamper is a disappointment: grey and riddled with sea lice, and he must add a succession of chemicals to turn the meat pink and kill off the parasites, bringing it up to the “premium” standard so trumpeted by the industry. Salmon farms pumped 48,000kg of formaldehyde into Scottish lochs in 2025 in a bid to protect against parasites, fungal infection and bacteria.
Project Slingshot has also launched a film, Gaslit: The hidden truth about salmon farming in the UK, which compares the claims against the reality. Footage of the sea lice that plague the fish in their ocean pens, eating away at their bodies, is more than enough to put you off your M&S Caledonian Gold Salmon fillet. As Gaslit grimly points out: “We only get what the lice don’t eat.”
One of the interviewees, journalist and environmental activist George Monbiot, explains: “We use these terms like aquaculture and fish farming, and even if the terms aren’t designed to do that, they do airbrush the reality. This is factory farming, just the same as with pigs or chickens.” And, as the film makes clear, 100% of Scottish salmon sold in UK supermarkets is factory-farmed.
As with its Frankenchicken campaign and efforts to highlight the use of gas chambers to kill pigs, the group have gone heavy on the advertising during the eight-week campaign, placing 5,000 posters on the London Underground and asking consumers to contact M&S boss Stuart Machin with their concerns. Here are the details if you’d like to do the same.
Watch Chris Packham in The Perfect Picnic
Watch Gaslit: The hidden truth about salmon farming in the UK