News / Hoganess Salmon managers face new charges
A SHETLAND salmon farm that recently escaped prosecution for the use of illegal chemicals faces legal action once again for trapping and killing seals.
Animal welfare charity Scottish SPCA has confirmed that following a raid in August this year on Hoganess Salmon, near Walls, on Shetland’s west mainland, two men from Lerwick have been reported to the procurator fiscal.
It is understood that the two men are regional manager Graham McNally and site manager Ross Morrison, both of whom were charged with animal cruelty over the death of around 20,000 salmon last year.
Those charges were dropped two months ago as a result of failures by the environment agency SEPA to submit a case over the illegal discharge of chemicals.
The procurator fiscal refused to prosecute when it emerged that SEPA had been using the wrong legislation to press charges, 14 months after the initial raid on the salmon farm.
The Scottish government would not pursue the case against Hoganess, even though highly toxic sheep and horse dip were found on the site when it was raided in August 2010. The chemicals were used for killing sea lice, which pose a huge problem for salmon farmers.
After the salmon deaths, Hoganess Salmon’s parent company Lakeland was sold to the Norwegian/Polish multinational Morpol. It has now been grouped with the company’s other UK fish farms into the Meridian Salmon Group.
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