Bakkafrost

In 2021, Animal Equality released harrowing footage of fish suffering during slaughter at the Scottish Salmon Company, which is owned by Bakkafrost. Many of the animals had their gills cut while they were fully conscious, with some falling to the floor where they were left to asphyxiate. Others were clubbed to death with one fish being struck no less than seven times. All this violence and suffering was completely unnecessary because there was reportedly a multimillion-pound stun-kill machine on site.³

Conditions are so bad on Bakkafrosts’s farms that 2.25 million fish died at their Scottish sites in 2023, which somehow is still an improvement on the 3.5 million fish who could not survive in their farms in 2022.⁴

In all, more than 80% of fish at two of Bakkafrost’s farms died in recent years.⁵

In 2023, a campaigner filmed salmon with chunks of their flesh missing at Bakkafrost’s Portree site. It is thought that the animals had been attacked by predators and, due to being stuck in a factory farm, were unable to escape.⁶

Also in 2023, investigators visited Bakkafrost’s Loch Carron site and found that the salmon were infested with flesh-eating lice.⁷

Lice are a huge problem for the fish at Bakkafrost. Their Quarry Point farm in Loch Fyne was found to be almost four times over the safe threshold for sea lice numbers in 2025.⁸

In 2025, investigators visited Bakkafrost’s Loch Torridon site and found that sick, injured, and lice-infested fish had been left to starve to death in a sea cage that Bakkafrost had claimed was empty.⁹ Such a lovely ethical company.

In August 2021, Bakkafrosts’s 400-tonne feed barge sank on the outskirts of Portree’s harbour. Nine months later, when the company had still not bothered to salvage it, the feed inside started rotting and emitting toxic hydrogen sulphide gas.¹⁰ Bakkafrost said there was no danger to the public, but the authorities still set up a cordon because that is a gas that poses a serious health risk and can lead to “individuals abruptly collapsing and becoming unconscious following only a few breaths of hydrogen sulphide, an effect described as ‘knockdown’.”¹¹

Bakkafrost seems very happy to take our money to prop up its factory farming enterprise, even though its owners are two of the wealthiest people in the Danish Kingdom,¹² (of which the Faroe Islands are part). In 2021, The Scottish Salmon Company, which is owned by Bakkafrost, received £207,000 in public funds in the same year that the company made a profit of £76m.¹³ In 2025, Bakkafrost Scotland, in partnership with others, was given £471,000 of taxpayers’ money to help it identify diseases in salmon.¹⁴ It seems if we want to be kept safe from the diseases that this industry harbours, we have to pay for it ourselves. Also in 2025, Bakkafrost received £630,000 for a water treatment system that would allow it to grow larger and more fish (and therefore larger and more profits for its shareholders).¹⁵

Bakkafrost was one of three firms who lobbied the Scottish government to oppose a new safety limit on emamectin, the toxic, wildlife-harming chemical it uses to kill lice.¹⁶ Fuck the environment! We’ve got sick fish to sell!

Bakkafrost is a member of Salmon Scotland,¹⁷ a lobbying organisation which represents its members and which is permitted to speak on behalf of Bakkafrost.¹⁸ Its chief executive, Tavish Scott, is a former MSP. He has called the work of charities and campaigners who publicise the enormous problems with salmon farming “anti-democratic”¹⁹ and even threatened to sue an MSP for asking questions about the industry.²⁰ Scott has been investigated for alleged serious breaching of lobbying rules, including failing to register his activities, and has been described as a “regular visitor” to Holyrood where he still holds a parliamentary access pass.²¹

In 2025, Bakkafrost Scotland hired lawyers to try and stop an investigator from documenting the suffering and environmental impacts the company causes.²² It’s always best to shut up the critics rather than clean up the industry. Smart thinking, Bakkafrost.

Lice infestation in Scottish salmon farms is not just an animal cruelty issue; it is also an environmental hazard because the lice can infect wild fish. Of the 19 fish farms identified by the Scottish authorities as posing the biggest risk to endangered wild salmon, six belonged to Bakkafrost.²³

The toxic chemicals used to try and treat lice and fungal diseases are also a huge environmental problem as they pollute waters and kill wildlife. Did you know that salmon farms are allowed to use formaldehyde? This toxic chemical is classified as a carcinogen and was used 200 times over a three-year period by Scottish salmon farms,²⁴ including Bakkafrost.²⁵

Bakkafrost also used 12.7kg of emamectin benzoate in 2023 but some years has used more than 20kg.²⁶ Emamectin is poisonous to birds, mammals, fish, and other aquatic organisms.²⁷

In all, Bakkafrost broke environmental laws nine times in just two years²⁸ but it did so with impunity. Salmon farms just don’t seem to get prosecuted, no matter how much damage they do to Scottish wildlife and waters. Perhaps all that lobbying is paying off.

It’s not as though Bakkafrost’s environmental impacts are confined to Scotland. In 2022, the company was accused of “plundering” the Antarctic for krill for its salmon feed, thereby depriving whales, seals and penguins of food,²⁹ and unbalancing local ecosystems.

In 2022, the company bought its own Boeing 757 to fly its dead fish to the US,³⁰ which is a great way to add to their already enormous environmental impact.

And in 2026, it was accused of dumping diseased fish into a sea loch following a disease outbreak. The company called it an "isolated incident". ³¹

Research has revealed high levels of dioxins, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and organochlorine pesticides in farmed salmon, which could be a risk to human health. As far back as 2005, scientists said that carcinogenic chemicals in European farmed salmon could pose “elevated cancer and non-cancer health risks when consumed at modest rates”.³²

In 2020, the Scottish Salmon Company, owned by Bakkafrost, was reprimanded for feeding emamectin, a toxic pesticide, to fish twice as often as is permitted and breaching a safety limit, according to documents released by the Scottish government.³³

Bakkafrost has reported a large number of different diseases at its farms, including Piscirickettsia salmonis, Yersinia ruckeri, Vibrio sp., Aeromonas sp., Salmon gill poxvirus, Infectious pancreatic necrosis, Infectious salmon anaemia virus, Salmonid alphavirus, Neoparamoeba perurans, and Paranucleospora theridion.³⁴

In 2025, a campaigner filmed a large number of bins and skips at a Bakkafrost plant where the company stores its infected dead fish³⁵. The bins are marked “category 2 material”, which means they pose a high risk to humans and animals.³⁶