Health Alerts, Hygiene Violations, Public Health Reports, Warnings, Chemical Violations, Bacterial Issues and other Issues involving Scottish Salmon since 01/01/2022
Request
Your request was about the following information:
‘Please provide information on Scottish salmon since 1 January 2022. Please include any health alerts, hygiene violations, public health reports, warnings, chemical violations, bacterial issues (e.g. Listeria, Coliforms, Enterococci and E.coli), customs incidents (e.g. shipments refused at the French or Polish border) and other issues involving Scottish salmon. For example, a recent FOI disclosure by CalMac highlighted bacterial contamination of Scottish salmon destined for export to France via DR Macleod/DFDS: https://donstaniford.typepad.com/files/pr-calmac-foi-wastes-6-january-2025.pdf
Another FOI disclosure in January 2025 by APHA detailed four rejected shipments of Scottish salmon by France:
Response
You can find in the below points the information you requested:
• Food Standards Scotland (FSS) does not issue health alerts. You might want to contact Public Health Scotland (PHS) as this may be a more suitable organisation to provide this information.
• FSS has not received any reports of hygiene violations on or after 1 January 2022.
• FSS has not issued any Public Health Reports on or after 1 January 2022.
• FSS did not issue any warnings specifically relating to Scottish salmon. FSS has however issued wider warnings for example, covering cold-smoked, ready-to-eat (RTE) fish such as:
• FSS has not received any reports for chemical violations on or after 1 January 2022.
• In the attached tables with title ‘Incidents Bacterial’ and ‘Incidents (other)’ you can find the recorded incidents relating to Scottish salmon since 1 January 2022. Additionally in the attached table with title ‘Salmon Data’ you can find surveillance sampling results for the period of time from 1 January 2022 to 12 March 2025. These samples defined as Scottish are those for which the food description (on the label) clearly stated that the product was of Scottish origin or named a location in Scotland. Those samples defined in the table as NA are those relating to products where the origin was identified as a country other than Scotland/UK or was not recorded.
• FSS does not routinely record custom incidents. You might want to contact the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) as they may hold this information.
• In the attached table with title ‘Alerts 1’ you can find information for any other alerts relating to allergens and labelling.
• In relation to “a recent FOI disclosure by CalMac highlighted bacterial contamination of Scottish salmon destined for export to France via DR Macleod/DFDS” FSS is unaware of this.
• In relation to the EU Rejection Notifications from France listed above in the table, these sit with DEFRA
