Looking Back: Halibut activists ‘may strike again’

At the end of 2006, Fish Farmer reported a warning to fish farmers that the activists who released farmed halibut from a site on Scotland’s west coast could  carry out another raid.

In September that year, around £15,000 fish were released from a site operated by Kames Marine Fish Farm at Kilmelford, near Oban. The attack was estimated as causing £500,000 worth of damage.

An anonymous post on the Internet ascribed responsibility to the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). Many of the “liberated” fish did not enjoy their new-found freedom for long, however, and thousands of dead halibut subsequently turned up on the shores of the loch.

We reported Kames’ then Managing Director Stuart Cannon as saying: “From one fish farmer to another fish farmer, I’d like to say that the industry must take this seriously and they must review their security and vigilance dramatically, because they [the ALF] are serious vandals and they intend to hit elsewhere.”

Strathclyde Police echoed this warning and said, “a repeat of the Kames Fish Farm incident is a very distinct possibility.”

Thankfully, this kind of attack did not, as it turned out, become the anti-farming activists’ tactic of choice. While it made the news, releasing farmed fish clearly worked against the welfare of the fish and, since the escape of farmed fish into the wild population has become another reason for criticising the industry, it would make no sense for “animal rights” activists to do it themselves.

Kames (with Stuart Cannon as Chairman now) is still going strong as a rainbow trout farmer, although the business no longer farms halibut.

Meanwhile the Animal Liberation Front, a clandestine and decentralised organisation, is classed by the British government as a domestic extremist organisation and members of the ALF have on several occasions been barred from coming to the UK.