What makes M&S salmon responsibly sourced?

What makes M&S salmon responsibly sourced?

Our responsibly sourced Scottish salmon is high in quality, rich in Omega 3 and offers great everyday value, making it a firm favourite for families across the country. But before it reaches our shelves, we go to great lengths to make sure that every piece of fresh salmon is sourced to our leading welfare and environmental standards.

It’s my team’s responsibility to ensure that our salmon is always sourced responsibly and central to that is our leading Select Farms standards together with our long-standing partnership with our supplier Scottish Sea Farms. Although there are many farms operated by Scottish Sea Farms across Scotland, at M&S we only source from a handful of dedicated farms that are exclusive to our business—meaning we know and trust our Select Farmers to meet our high standards.

Over the last 15 years, my team has worked together with Scottish Sea Farms to continually raise the bar for salmon welfare and sustainability—not just for M&S but for the industry too. One step we’ve taken together is meeting the widely recognised RSPCA Assured standards across all of our Select Farms producing salmon, ensuring the best growing conditions so the fish are happier and healthier as a result.

Stocking densities are a crucial part of our high standards, because if there are too many fish in one pen it means there’s not enough room for them to swim around freely. Because welfare is at the heart of our standards, we’ve worked with Scottish Sea Farms to adopt one of the lowest stocking densities for our salmon at just 1.5% fish to 98.5% water. It makes a huge difference to the welfare of the fish, making them happier and reducing stress.

We want to make sure the salmon in our supply chain receive the nutrients they need whilst protecting our planet. Together with our farms, we’ve developed a bespoke, nutritious diet containing added vitamins, so the fish grow big and strong. And to minimise the use of marine ingredients, this feed is nearly 70% plant-based and is independently certified as coming from sustainable sources such as IFFO, MSC and Pro Terra.

With clean, fresh waters and strong currents, the salmon grown for M&S can thrive and keep their muscles working. Our priority is to make sure the fish are always healthy, so our farms do checks on their skin, fins and eyes every day of the year. The farms we work with only use veterinary medicine when it’s absolutely necessary and we stopped using antibiotics over eight years ago.

These are just some of the steps that mean our customers can be confident that every pack of M&S salmon they buy has been sourced with care. And to make sure our leading standards are always being met, we audit our Select Farms at least once per year. What’s more, because we’re committed to being transparent, we make it easy for our customers to find out detailed information on our farms such as location and farming methods by using our interactive seafood map.

But we know there’s always more to be done. Because of our incredibly strong relationship with Scottish Sea Farms, we’ll continue working collaboratively to keep on improving our standards, so that our customers can trust that M&S salmon has always been, and always will be, sourced responsibly.
 

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