‘And any marine raw materials used come from fisheries that are strictly regulated by quotas – limits that are carefully tracked.’

The statement said the debate around farmed salmon had ‘been kidnapped’ by people who were not only wrong, but were basically unsympathetic to the very idea of salmon farming.

While it welcomed a factual debate on aquaculture, the council found it not only regrettable that untruths were being fed to the public, but that Swedish municipal politicians were making decisions based on such falsehoods.

The council said that every type of food production had some environmental footprint, but pointed out that meat such as pork released more than twice the amount of carbon dioxide as farmed salmon.