MOWI

A 2024 investigation found that the RSPCA Assured company Mowi was allowing fish to suffocate to death in breach of RSPCA Assured welfare standards.⁸

The company was also filmed beating fish to death, in breach of both the RSPCA Assured welfare standards⁹ and common human decency.

Conditions are so bad at Mowi’s farms that one million animals died at just one site during a single production cycle.¹⁰

In 2021, more than 100,000 fish suffocated to death at a Mowi farm in Scotland after a worker left them unattended and the oxygen supply ceased.¹¹

At the same site, in the same month, a buildup of hydrogen sulphide killed more than 1 million fish in 10 hours. The authorities took no action, and then did its best to keep these deaths secret from the public. It seems protecting farm's profits is more important than protecting animals and the truth.¹²

Investigations routinely find that Mowi’s salmon are infested with lice, with fish being eaten alive by the parasites.[13, 14, 15, 16] In June 2025, Mowi was found to be 15 times above the industry’s own accepted threshold for sea lice infestation.¹⁷

Investigators have filmed fish at Mowi’s farms with damaged and missing eyes and whole chunks of their flesh eaten away.¹⁸

To combat the lice, fish farms use a vast amount of toxic chemicals, which can cause as much suffering to the fish as being eaten alive by lice. In 2024, 60,000 animals died on one day at one farm during chemical treatment for lice.¹⁹

Things are so bad that Mowi reported 4.7 million deaths at its farms in 2023 alone.²⁰

At one of Mowi’s Canadian farms, 475,000 animals died in a single incident in 2025 due to “environmental stress”.²¹ That same year, another 165,000 fish died at two sites from algal blooms.²²

Tens of thousands of lumpfish – introduced into the farm pens to help rid the salmon of the lice – also died at one of Mowi’s Scottish sites.²³

The company was reprimanded by the Scottish government in 2021 for shooting seals illegally.²⁴

Mowi lobbied against the introduction of a new safety limit on a toxic pesticide that kills marine wildlife and shockingly, it succeeded.²⁵

The company also lobbied to overturn an official government objection to the expansion of one of its farms and, again, succeeded.²⁶

Mowi lobbies MSPs (Members of the Scottish Parliament) directly as well as through the industry body Salmon Scotland.²⁷ It has lobbied MSPs for more houses and better roads²⁸ near its farms to make recruitment easier,²⁹ as well as for better ferry services to make the delivery of those poor, doomed lumpfish simpler.³⁰ It has also held high-level discussions about reducing bureaucracy.³¹ As if they abide by the rules anyway.

We don’t know how much Mowi spends lobbying politicians but just in Poland, where it doesn’t have a single fish farm, it spent €10,000 in 2023.³² We can only imagine the size of the global figure and what it gets in return.

Mowi hates people knowing how bad things are at its farms and it obtained a court injunction to stop a campaigner from investigating and revealing the suffering and pollution that he routinely finds.³³

In 2024, the European Commission opened proceedings against Mowi over alleged price-fixing.³⁴

Despite everything, it continues to get a big chunk of public money. In 2016, it was given £141,690 for a hydrolicer workboat and another £127,000 for equipment to deal with lice. It clearly wasn’t enough as in 2018 the company was given £725,192 for a hydrolicer and then another £182,540 for nets.³⁵ In 2019, the Scottish government gave them £2.2 million.³⁶ There was a grant of £2 million in 2022,³⁷ and £2 million more in 2024,³⁸ quickly followed by another £5 million.³⁹ Just to be clear, that year, Mowi’s revenue exceeded £4.5 billion. And in 2024, Mowi received a grant of around £50,000 to test new systems to tackle parasites.⁴⁰ Taxpayers famously love propping up wealthy factory farming corporations.

Mowi is a member of Salmon Scotland,⁴¹ a lobbying organisation which represents its members. 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”⁴² and even threatened to sue an MSP for asking questions about the problems caused by the industry.⁴³ Scott has been investigated for alleged serious breaches 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.⁴⁴

Between 2022 and 2024, Mowi was found to have breached environmental rules 60 times.⁴⁵

In 2024, it was revealed that Mowi had hired a company to dispose of its “waste”, and that company was caught illegally burying dead fish on a Scottish beach. In response, Mowi said that, despite the incident, the company in question had used “common sense”.⁴⁶

Tens of thousands of farmed fish have escaped Mowi’s pens, including 27,000 salmon in Norway and two incidents in Scotland where 48,000⁴⁷ and then 75,000 fish escaped.⁴⁸ Good for them, we say, swim free! But such escapes can also have a devastating effect on the health of wild salmon in the region⁴⁹ so it's probably best not to factory farm salmon at all.

Unsurprisingly, Mowi has been named by authorities as the company that poses the biggest danger to free-living salmon in terms of spreading lice infestation.⁵⁰

Mowi has had outbreaks of the untreatable infectious salmon anaemia that can also impact wild salmon and other fish.⁵¹

Mowi used 14.5 tonnes of antibiotics in its farms between 2016 and 2022.⁵² Over-use of antibiotics, which is common in factory farming, contributes to antimicrobial resistance — a growing public health crisis.⁵³

The company also used 100,000 kg of formaldehyde between 2019 and 2023.⁵⁴ This WHO-classified carcinogen is used to treat disease in fish and has already been found polluting at least ten Scottish lochs. When asked about this, Mowi simply declined to comment.⁵⁵

Mowi also uses a number of other toxic chemicals including deltamethrin, emamectin benzoate, and azamethiphos, even on salmon later sold as organic.⁵⁶

Mowi used 1.3 million litres of hydrogen peroxide in a single year,⁵⁷ and that raised concerns for the health of people swimming in the sea.⁵⁸

With all of these toxic chemicals swilling about in the pens, eating the fish could be a problem. 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”.⁵⁹

In 2023, Mowi was fined £800,000 for failings⁶⁰ that led to the death of a fish farmer who was crushed between boats and drowned.⁶¹

In a sign, perhaps, of just how much it cares for its workers, Mowi reportedly sacked a man after he suffered a spinal injury which he attributed to working long hours without adequate safety provision.⁶²

In fact, there is a litany of injuries to Mowi’s workers, including broken bones and amputations.⁶³

Mowi has a history of treating workers appallingly, with alleged lack of toilets and washing facilities, timed seven-minute toilet breaks and a canteen without adequate seating where workers are forced to eat standing-up during their luxurious half-hour breaks. It is also accused of not providing proper safety equipment.⁶⁴

In 2021, Mowi was subject to two official enforcement notices after it failed to minimise the risk of liquefied natural gas leaking out, which could cause fire and explosions.⁶⁵