Four in ten of the salmon put into Scotland's sea cages in 2022 died before anyone could eat them, and the inspectors made two unannounced visits in three years. Scottish farmed salmon is sold as the clean, cold-water, omega-3 food of the north, the fish the health pages tell you to eat twice a week. The industry's own production survey, published last autumn, put the losses on the 2022 intake at about 40%, the worst since records began in 1989. At some sites it was worse: the Bay of Holland cages lost four fish in ten in a single month at the start of 2025. In one November, string jellyfish drifted through two sites and killed 194,000 fish. Across 2023, 2024 and 2025 the farms reported nearly 36 million dead salmon. The Fish Health Inspectorate, the body meant to police it, made two unannounced inspections in 2024 and none at all in 2023 or in the first nine months of 2025. It recorded 55 legal breaches in 2024, most of them for record-keeping, and has not issued a financial penalty since 2021. Mowi's site at Inchmore lost 3 million fish in three years and was never inspected. A hatchery that had taken up to £5 million of public money reported more than 9 million dead. The minister responsible, Mairi Gougeon, told parliament Scotland has "a really robust regulatory regime". A cattle farmer who lost four animals in ten before slaughter would have the ministry at the gate inside a week, and quite rightly. The salmon dies by the million in a net off a sea loch, and the fillet goes out under a saltire.