A CELEBRITY row over salmon farming spilt into the street outside Jamie Oliver’s London restaurant yesterday when campaigners picketed his Sunday lunchtime customers.

The Naked Chef has been accused of “selling his soul” after a Christmas advertising campaign for Sainsbury’s had him promoting farmed salmon as healthy, while campaigners say that the practice is damaging the environment and killing off wild salmon stocks.

The Scottish salmon farm where the advert is filmed has been fined in the past for its practices and still fails Scottish environmental standards.

Oliver has also been called a hypocrite for advertising something that he refuses to serve in his restaurant, Fifteen, where only the freshest wild salmon appears on the menu.

Critics of the salmon farming industry include several of the country’s celebrity chefs including Clarissa Dickson Wright, Antony Worrall Thompson and Andrew Fairlie, of the Gleneagles Hotel in Perthshire.

“Jamie Oliver is supporting what is probably a defective farm and he is supporting a product which he doesn’t eat,” Ms Dickson Wright said. “I think he’s a whore. Isn’t that what whores do, take money for something they wouldn’t do otherwise? Jamie has sold his soul carte blanche to Sainsbury’s and turns up wherever they want him.”

Campaigners argue that salmon farming practices produce unnatural fish that are high in fat and contain pesticides, harmful dioxins and artificial food dyes. They also claim that the farms pollute Scottish waters and that wild salmon are being killed by diseases carried by their farmed brothers. Rod O’Sullivan, of the Salmon Farm Protest Group that handed out leaflets to diners outside Fifteen yesterday, accused Oliver of ignoring the issues in favour of his pay cheque.

“I suppose it is hard to say no to £1 million, but he has just swallowed the Sainsbury’s line after going to a salmon farm and being shown lots of nice things before going on his way.

“We are concerned with protecting the wild fish, and wild Atlantic salmon is now an endangered species. People should be aware of the damage it is doing.”

The advert in question was filmed at Loch Hourn salmon farm in Inverness-shire, run by Marine Harvest, which supplies the supermarket. Oliver is filmed plucking a fresh fish from the loch’s “cold” water — which he tells viewers ensures that the fish is healthy — before dashing off to a party to cook it for friends.

The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency has given warning to the company about conditions at the site, which was fined in June 2000 for overstocking its cages, leading to a large fish kill that polluted the surrounding waters. Although the situation has improved, an agency spokeswoman said that there were still concerns and the site was failing to meet environmental standards.

A spokeswoman for Marine Harvest insisted that the farm did not damage the environment and that its fish were in excellent condition.

“Jamie Oliver spent quite a lot of time up there asking lots of probing questions about how the fish farms were run. He was not just taking a line, he found out for himself,” the spokeswoman added.

Oliver said last night: “One of the reasons I work with Sainsbury’s is to get this better-quality food to everyone around the country, and salmon is a perfect example of this.”

A spokesman for the chef said that farmed salmon was not on the menu at his restaurant because the chefs cooked only with seasonal produce.

The Food Standards Agency said that the benefits of eating oily fish outweighed any risks posed by dioxins in salmon.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• UK regional accents thrive against the odds
• ‘Scarecrow’ wind farms put rare birds to flight
• What an anti-climax: G-spot is a myth