Salmon farming has done ‘enormous harm’ to fish stocks and the environment, Jeremy Paxman has warned, as he called for an overhaul of the industry to protect wildlife. The presenter, and keen angler, said many fisheries traded on the image that salmon arrived at the table ‘fresh from the wild seas’ when, in reality most has been bred in cramped, filthy cages in the sea.

There are now 250 salmon farms on the western coast of Scotland, but the surge has coincided with a collapse in the number of wild salmon in the area. Fish cages are mostly sited near the shore, or in estuaries for easy access, but the overcrowded conditions is a breeding ground for sea lice which infect wild fish when they begin migrating from the sea up rivers.

Although consumers are left with their impression their salmon has been caught in wild lochs, the stock are actually kept in 40 metre cages of around 70,000 fish, Paxman warned in an editorial for the Financial Times Weekend section. “It’s like a series of floating battery hen sheds,” he said. “Salmon has long been sold on the prospect of cleanliness and health. The impression is fraudulent. “Only a few decades ago you ate Atlantic salmon if you were lucky enough to be a toff, or one of his employees. Not iw is ubiquitous, piled high in supermarket fridges or lying pink and flabby on plates at wedding receptions and awards dinners.

“But when you rear dish in the quantities necessary to meet growing demand, you start playing with the environment. Confining naturally migratory and carnivorous animals in packed pens produces enormous quantities of faeces which covers the seabed beneath. These cages provide ideal breeding grounds for the sea louse. “Salmon and trout migrating to the sea or returning to their natural rivers to spawn must swim through clouds of sea lice. Salmon farms have done enormous harm.”

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