A FORMER employee of a prestigious smokehouse has claimed tonnes of premium "Scottish" smoked salmon actually came from Norway and Chile.
Denise Chadwick, the former head buyer of award-winning St James Smokehouse in Annan, Dumfries and Galloway, claims the firm routinely passed off lower-priced imports as the genuine article.
The 60-year-old has filed a lawsuit in the US District Court in Newark claiming she was sacked after warning the company's owner he could face jail if the alleged swindle was discovered.
St James denies the claims and says it will "vigorously defend" the "spurious" allegations.
According to Undercurrent, a news website for the seafood industry, Ms Chadwick has given the court copies of e-mails she sent to Brendan Maher, owner of the Miami-based company.
One states: "I think the last time I ordered a full truck from Scotland for smoking in Annan was in August last year and since then I have been buying Norwegian except for when I was instructed to buy Scottish when we had visitors - for example when the FDA [US Food and Drug Administration] came to inspect the factory in Scotland and I had to make sure there was only Scottish salmon on the premises."
Ms Chadwick's lawyer, Aaron Freiwald, said her job was to gauge the price of salmon in the international market and to purchase bulk quantities for sale in the US. Scottish salmon is typically twice as expensive as Chilean salmon.
Ms Chadwick is suing under the state's Conscientious Employee Protection Act, claiming her bosses retaliated against her when she questioned practices that could be in violation of federal seafood safety and marketing rules.
She claims invoices to retailers were deliberately mislabelled to suggest they were from Scotland.
The lawsuit is reported to state: "As chief buyer, Ms Chadwick came under increasing pressure to buy cheaper Chilean salmon, often thousands of pounds at a time.
"Ms Chadwick learned that the cheaper salmon was being sent to smoke houses in Miami and Scotland and then packaged and sold as more expensive Scottish salmon."
Ms Chadwick, who has lived in New Jersey in the US for the last 14 years, was hired by St James as its principal buyer in August 2012.
She claims she was fired by the firm on March 12 - a day after she sent her boss an email warning of the potential for criminal charges.
However, a spokesman for St James said she was told to go in February due to her "failure to perform her services adequately".
The firm, which recently won the Scotland Food and Drink Excellence Award for Exports, claims she asked Mr Maher to reconsider and while he was doing so she sent the emails which have been handed over to the court in attempt to build a case against the company.
The St James spokesman said: "The allegations asserted by Ms Chadwick are false and without any factual support. St James does not conduct its operations in the manner claimed and will vigorously defend these spurious claims. Ms Chadwick's false e-mail was an effort to avoid the consequences of her failure to perform her job responsibilities and the previously announced pending termination."
He added that the firm is already providing documentation to customers "demonstrating the validity of the product provided".
Ms Chadwick was involved in a similar action against her former employer North Landing Ltd in 2012. The case was reported to have been settled out of court.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article