Swedish fish firms have illegally sold around 200 tonnes of Baltic salmon to the European Union, ignoring an EU ban due to toxic chemicals in the fish.

Baltic herring and salmon can be sold to domestic consumers in Sweden, Finland and Latvia but only if the sellers give advice about safe limits for consumption.

Even so there is not much demand for the fish.

Fish salesman, Per Ahlgren said he’d had no alternative but to find a buyer outside Sweden:

“This salmon is impossible to sell in Sweden. People don’t eat this kind here. It must be red and look good, so this was the only way. France was the only one that was willing to buy it along with Denmark.”

With the Baltic Sea described as being heavily polluted the European Union back in 2002 banned Sweden from exporting salmon caught there after it was found to contain high levels of Dioxin.

French importer “Pecheries Nordiques” admitted to buying the fish but said it had acted in good faith and that tests it had carried out had not identified a dioxin presence.

The alert about the exports follows a horse meat contamination scandal in the EU which affected several countries.