UK organic salmon standards

After an extensive review, the Soil Association has decided to withdraw from setting standards for organic salmon.

For more than two decades, we have developed and set strict standards for organic salmon, raising the bar for farmed fish. But increasing environmental and welfare concerns led us to review our involvement in the sector.

The review found that Soil Association standards are some of the strictest in the industry and they have sparked positive change across the whole salmon farming sector, such as pre-slaughter stunning. It is always our aim, and the aim of organic standards more broadly, to drive positive and significant change. However, the review established that there was a lack of evidence that Soil Association standards were delivering good enough outcomes for organic farmed salmon, and a lack of confidence this could change fast enough.

We set a very high bar for our standards, and we are committed to ensuring that the Soil Association organic symbol’s seal of approval reflects meaningful outcomes for people, animals, and nature. This means being prepared to ask difficult questions and act on the evidence when we believe we can no longer provide that assurance.

Our review concluded that, although a better future for organic farmed salmon could be possible, we were not sufficiently confident that these challenges could be resolved through changes to our standards within a suitable timeframe. This is especially due to environmental pressures such as rising sea temperatures leading to challenges that are often outside the control of producers.

This has led to the difficult decision to withdraw from setting standards for organic salmon. We are grateful to the industry and everyone who has worked with us during the review, which has been a significant commitment of time and effort to explore all of the possible solutions to the challenges we identified. Over the coming weeks and months, we will be working with the sector to arrange a suitable timeframe for this decision to be implemented.

What our review involved

The review involved a number of independent experts across several years. We heard from producers, aquaculture experts, scientists, policymakers, animal welfare organisations, campaigners and others, and considered a broad range of evidence relating to salmon welfare, environmental performance and the effectiveness of certification.

We aimed to tackle high mortality rates and the impacts of veterinary treatments while ensuring good welfare, improving the sustainability of feed, and protecting sensitive marine environments.

Our analysis included a comprehensive evaluation of current welfare and environmental outcomes, and the extent to which Soil Association standards could address areas of concern within a suitable timeframe.

What we found

Our standards have driven positive change:

• Soil Association standards have led to improvements in organic and non-organic salmon farming over the two decades we have been involved.

• Development of Soil Association standards led to improved salmon standards being adopted in the EU organic regulations, which will continue to exist.

• Our standards also led to better practices being rolled out across the entire industry including non-organic sites. This includes pre-slaughter stunning and innovative approaches to net cleaning that avoid the use of chemical anti-foulants.

• Organic sites perform well on veterinary treatments, with the most harmful treatments banned and minimal use of permitted treatments, with only two uses use of deltamethrin over the last two years.

Mortality and welfare concerns:

• The review found high levels of mortality on organic farms, and there was a lack of confidence that this could be resolved in a suitable timeframe.

• Proposals for new standards to better monitor mortality and its causes would have taken several years to implement.

• High mortality events were often outside of producer control due to rising sea temperatures leading to parasite outbreaks, blooms of micro jellyfish, and disease.

• There were also concerns around preventing suffering as it is very difficult to treat or euthanise individual fish.

• There is a lack of available insight into what is a good life for farmed salmon and therefore additional animal welfare outcome assessments could not be quickly implemented with confidence.

• There was therefore a lack of evidence that the current outcomes were likely to improve in the short to medium term.

Challenges around sustainability of feed:

• There was concern around feed sustainability, as organic producers are required to feed salmon a diet as natural as possible. The Soil Association was concerned this was resulting in too much reliance on wild fish stocks.

• An ambition within the review was to progress implementation of stricter standards and better prioritise marine by-products and trimmings. But challenges around traceability of these products led to a lack of confidence this was likely to be resolved fast enough.

What happens next for organic salmon

The process of Soil Association withdrawing from setting standards for organic salmon will commence in the coming weeks, working with the industry to minimise disruption to businesses. There are organic standards stipulated in legislation, in what is known as the organic regulations, and those will continue to exist. In the short term, Soil Association Certification will be honouring its contracts to businesses, certifying to the regulations.

Processors need time to change their packaging and some products, such as those in tins, have long shelf lives. This means that the Soil Association logo will remain on salmon for some time and we will be working with the sector to establish a suitable timeframe for withdrawal. We will continue to work with transparency and to provide updates as these plans progress.

Although we are withdrawing due to concerns over the outcomes being delivered by our standards, consumers can be assured that our logo is only ever on pack if all Soil Association standards have been met. If people do choose to eat salmon, we would always recommend looking for certification logos and organic does continue to be one of the best options with lower stocking densities and restrictions on veterinary treatments.

Soil Association next steps for aquaculture

The Soil Association will continue to advocate for improvements in the farmed salmon sector – withdrawal of our logo does not mean walking away.

We recognise the commitment, expertise and significant efforts made by producers, processors and others across the sector to meet our standards and improve welfare and environmental performance. We hope that work will continue and are grateful to the sector for collaborating with us through this review.

Currently the Soil Association plays a convening role on raising aquaculture standards within the organic regulations, working with umbrella organisations IFOAM Organics International and IFOAM Organics Europe.

We will bring the expertise gathered as part of this review to these international discussions as we develop a policy position to decide what advocacy we will pursue off the back of this decision. We will provide updates as this work develops over the next year.

Page last updated: November 2026