In Scotland 104 coastal waters are designated ‘shellfish growing waters’ under the European Community Shellfish Waters Directive (79/923/EEC). These waters require protection to ensure the quality and productivity of shellfish, such as mussels and periwinkles and must meet the minimum environmental quality standards, as laid out in the Directive.

Discharges of sewage effluent to designated shellfish waters require additional treatment to meet bacteriological standards to ensure that the quality of edible shellfish does not pose a threat to human health. The Food Standards Agency classification results for 2003 shows that over 30% of designated shellfish harvesting waters currently provide Class A products. This is the highest quality standards with only shellfish harvested from Class A waters permitted to go straight on to the market.

In 2002 almost 90% of Scotland’s shellfish growing waters complied with the minimum environmental quality standards. However, member states must also work towards achieving guideline quality standards which are more stringent than the minimum standards. In Scotland less than 60% of these waters met the guideline standards in 2002.

In response to the requirements of the Shellfish Waters Directive SEPA has developed pollution reduction programmes for designated Shellfish Waters in Scotland. The programmes are available on these pages and define a series of actions specific to each designated shellfish growing water, which will be undertaken to ensure protection and compliance with the Directive.

The individual pollution reduction programmes for each designated growing water can be found here .

Additional information regarding the Shellfish Waters Directive can be found here .

Annex 1 : Water Quality standards for EC Shellfish Waters Directive (pdf)

Annex 2 : Glossary (pdf)