Rapid expansion of fish farming has left animal welfare laws struggling to keep up, but scientists are striving to stop trillions of animals suffering. By David Burrows.
“We’re at a moment when governments are deciding to invest in this [aquaculture] and venture capital is coming in, but before it gets entrenched we have the opportunity to stop it.”
The words of professor Kathy Hessler, assistant dean animal law at GW Law School, US, during a panel at last week’s tenth annual Oxford Summer School on Animal Ethics, held at Merton College, University of Oxford.
There is an argument that aquaculture is already entrenched as a protein production train that, fuelled by its ‘sustainability’ claims, continues to gather steam.
In 2022, global aquaculture production reached 130.9 million tonnes, of which 94.4 million tonnes are aquatic animals, according to the latest FAO figures. This translates to trillions of aquatic creatures being raised each year in “unnatural”, “inhumane” and “over-crowded” conditions, according to academics and campaigners that joined Hessler in a debate titled: ‘Aquaculture – the next moral frontier’.
Those gathered for the summer school – leading researchers in animal ethics from all over the world with expertise in everything from horses and cheetahs to circus animals and intensive livestock production – were clearly shocked by the “mind boggling” numbers involved.
As noted in the initial discussion, consumers don’t tend to feel much when it comes to how their fish ends up on their plate. Many will seek out environmental standards or certifications but there is not the deep connection that they perhaps have with the more visible protein sources like cattle and sheep.
“These [aquatic animals] are animals that you sometimes don’t think about as animals,” explained Hessler but they are “being kept in unnatural conditions” and “this is happening increasingly around the globe”.
The speed with which aquaculture has gained such scale is certainly scaring animal welfare experts and campaigners alike. “These animals are receiving very little protection,” and yet most countries are using the ‘blue economy’ as a framework to grow their aquaculture sectors, warned Amy Wilson, executive director of Animal Law Reform South Africa and the first South African to graduate with a Master’s degree in Animal Law.
Caught greenwashing?
Aquaculture has been promoted as a safe, sustainable and healthy way to produce proteins but the likes of Wilson and Hessler are hoping to raise awareness of this “invisible” production system, dispelling some of the myths they claim are being perpetuated by the major players and bought by governments as they green-light continued expansions.
Sales of salmon in the UK leapt by 5.5% in the 12 months to December, for example, accounting for nearly a third of all fish sales in the UK. The year-on-year growth outpaced the 2.9% rise recorded across the wider fish category, according to industry representative group Scottish Salmon. The fish farmed in five areas across Scotland’s west coast and northern islands, also remains the UK’s largest food export. “[…] it’s clear that people are choosing it for its health benefits and sustainability,” said chief executive Tavish Scott.
Scott is currently under formal investigation by the Scottish parliamentary ethics watchdog over allegations of improper lobbying practices and intimidation of elected officials, according to reports in May. He denies any wrongdoing, according to Undercurrent News.
Dale Vince, the Britsh green energy industrialist and owner of Ecotricity is the man who filed the complaint. Vince has become a prominent anti-aquaculture campaigner: “I’m determined the public know about the abusive practice of the salmon farming industry,” he has said.
The scientists speaking in Oxford also hope to put salmon and the host of other creatures either produced in aquaculture systems or caught to feed them firmly in the spotlight. “Speaking about aquatic animals, who often fall outside the boundaries of our (highly selective) circle of empathy, can feel isolating at times,” wrote Giulia Malerbi, head of global policy at Aquatic Life Institute, following her few days in Oxford. “But this week reminded me that change often begins in these exact spaces: where tough questions are welcomed and silenced topics are finally heard.”
Malerbi is one of those who have been campaigning for a ban on octopuses being farmed for food. The issue has attracted a lot of media interest in recent months as countries like Spain look to build industrial octopus farms. Campaigners and animal activists have been outraged by the prospect.
As World Animal Protection noted: “Octopuses are highly intelligent and sentient animals, known for their problem-solving skills, complex behaviours, and ability to experience pain and stress — qualities that make them particularly unsuitable for captivity.”
Malerbi told attendees in Oxford that “there is no humane way to cull an octopus”, because they are “so weird and complex”. She was also at pains to explain that octopus farming is more than just a niche issue – “it’s a clear test of our values and a chance to prevent suffering before it becomes normalised”, she noted.
This will take time, however. Indeed, the welfare experts acknowledged the need to (dramatically) improve consumer awareness of aquaculture, with people often “morally blind” to aquatic animals. “A lot of people do not know fish and crustaceans are sentient beings,” said Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) global campaigns manager Antoine Tifine. “They feel pain. They suffer. And that has been clearly established in science [for some time],” he added.
Research presented at the school by CIWF (see Footprint’s summary here) suggests consumer education could be a powerful tool in affecting change (when the public push, politicians tend to listen). Some 78% of the 9,127 adults CIWF polled across nine countries, including the UK, believe fish should have the same legal protection as other farmed animals we eat, with 11% wanting them to have greater protection.
“We found that those participants who acknowledge fish sentience, fish positive and negative emotions and fish intelligence were [two times] more likely to support [welfare] legislation than those participants who denied these fish capacities,” explained CIWF research manager Santiago Pintos during his presentation.
Pintos also discovered that those who reported high familiarity and high knowledge of fish farming practices were “up to three times as likely to support fish welfare regulations than those who reported very low knowledge or no knowledge at all”.
Swelling support
The findings are promising because raising awareness of fish sentience and fish farming practices could lead to strong public support for legislation. And improvements to the legal protections for animals reared in aquaculture are needed fast – especially if governments and investors keep supporting further scaling of the sector.
Wilson explained how in countries like the US there is “a lot of regulation when it comes to environmental permits and things like that. “But if you’re looking at it from an animal perspective […] aquatic animals used in aquaculture are systematically excluded from many of the farmed animal and animal protection laws,” she added.
Critics of those environmental protections, it should be noted, are not hard to find, either. Malerbi, like others, raised concerns about the unintended consequences of rearing carnivorous species like salmon and octopus for food. Aquaculture is promoted as a system to provide proteins and reduce pressure on depleted oceans but “we are trying to tackle the problem of overfishing by fishing more [to feed farmed aquatic animals]”, she said.
The aquaculture sector has also been beset by accusations of pollution, and its impact on the local environment. There are studies, mind you, showing that it can create fewer greenhouse gases than other forms of livestock protein given its limited land-use changes, improved feed conversion rates, and reduced methane emissions from animals’ digestive systems.
What was clear in Oxford is that the narrative created of aquaculture being a (or perhaps the) sustainable solution to protein production ignores many of its invisible consequences – environmental, ethical and social – not to mention the option of producing and consuming more plant-based proteins.
Aquaculture is sold as a way to tackle food insecurity, reduce poverty and create jobs but it “doesn’t do any of those things due to the industrialisation of this sector”, Hessler explained.
Smaller fishers are pushed out, those gathered in Oxford heard, with large players dominating this protein chain as they do others. As Malerbi suggested: “There is a lot of suffering we can spare [if we act now].”
