It is encouraging that consumers are becoming increasingly concerned about farmed animal welfare standards, and using their purchasing power to help farmers move away from intensive farming systems that cause suffering (Salmon best in welfare stakes, April 4).

However, the belief that salmon is one of the most welfare-friendly farmed foods may be based on a number of misconceptions. Some consumers may still believe that fish have few welfare needs - a traditional view which has been corrected by modern research into their intelligence, complex behaviour and capacity to suffer.

While consumers are able to see animals when they are farmed on open land, salmon cages are underwater and the animals are out of sight of the public who, in any case, might not be able to interpret the behaviour they see. It may be tempting to think that because salmon are farmed in water they are reared in a natural manner, but, in fact, this intensive system denies their migratory instincts and exposes them to a variety of stresses.

We believe that, as it does other intensively farmed animals, the Scottish Executive should endorse and monitor welfare standards rather than leaving this to the industry.

It may, of course, be that the consumer survey quoted in your article found that salmon were simply better off when compared with other species - such as battery hens - that visibly suffer in factory farms, and in this regard we might have to agree.
Libby Anderson,
Political Director,
Advocates for Animals
10 Queensferry Street,
Edinburgh.

 Sid Patten of the Scottish Salmon Producers Organisation (SSPO) complains (April 3) that "ill-informed critics of salmon farming" have tried to damage the progress of his industry. Nothing could be further from the truth: the fish farmers are more than capable of doing that by themselves.

This is self-evident from Mr Patten's interpretation of the report (March 2007) prepared for Freedom Food by the Institute of Grocery Distribution. Mr Patten suggests that the report shows that the public perceive all salmon as being farmed to the highest standards of welfare. However, the report is concerned solely with products reared to Freedom Food standards. Salmon is mentioned only once in the 66-page document.

Page 20 of the report contains a visual aid that shows dairy cattle as having the best living conditions, followed by salmon. This conclusion appears to be based upon a comment made by a "female with a young family" in a Chorleywood focus group. She said: "Well, with fish, they're just swimming around the tank, like at the pet shop. That's no different to swimming around in the sea."
Bruce Sandison,
Hysbackie,
Tongue, by Lairg,
Sutherland.

 The article by David Ross (April 4) made me almost choke on my bran and banana. The Consumer Attitudes to Animal Welfare report judged farmed salmon as having second-top living conditions in an environment described as "similar to nature". This was duly highlighted by the Scottish Salmon Producers Organisation. How can the life cycle of a wild salmon compare with that of a caged fish? Witness the blunt nose and ragged tail fin of the latter, due to close confinement with too many of its kind. Whereas the natural diet of prawn and shrimp gives the flesh of the wild fish its distinctive colouration, pellets fed to the caged variety are engineered to replicate the shade in nature.

"Similar to nature" indeed. I would deem the captivity of caged salmon second only to battery hen confinement in our cruelty to species category.

Both should be banned as an affront to humanity.
Frederick Jenkins,
The Lodge,
Burnton,
Kippen.