Don Staniford – Price for exposing the dark side of salmon farms

Don Staniford is an English environmental activist and blogger who runs an organisation dedicated to the exposure of Scottish salmon farming misdeeds called $camon $cotland, previously called Scottish Salmon Watch. He is being sued by a company called MOWI (previously called Marine Harvest), one of the largest seafood companies in the world. Don regularly uploads videos and blogs onto his website and some have even been used in newspaper articles and a popular Netflix documentary film, Seaspiracy. He has dedicated much of his time to bringing to light any malpractice, welfare abuse and violation to health and sanitary standards of the salmon farms. 

In response to Don’s blogs and videos, in 2017, MOWI began sending emails on a consistent basis for five years requesting Don to take down (within 48 hours) videos, graphics and blogs he’d created about the company’s salmon fish farms or risk legal proceedings being initiated. Don stood by his videos and blogs and refused to take down the majority of the material he had created. MOWI did not take kindly to his steadfastness and in response in September 2021, Don was served with an interdict (injunction) to stop him from going within 15 metres of any MOWI-owned vessel or structure, flying a drone within 50m of the fish farms, and harassing staff members. The court proceedings are underway and Don plans on fighting to the end and continues to hold salmon farmers accountable for their misconduct.

Watch Don’s testimony: