I've been struggling with what "ethical" fish farming could look like. I have some friends who work at fish farms in East Africa and have tried to convince me that the farms are really quite good from an environmental and animal welfare perspective.
I thought this would be a good chance to clean up my beliefs about fish farming by pressure testing the question: "What would it take for me to be convinced that a fish farm was not unethical, and that it was fine to eat fish from it?"
Most of what I've been able to find, largely from FWI and this good Vox article, is that the downsides of fish farming are:
- Fish feel pain when they are slaughtered without being stunned (e.g., killed slowly by cutting gills of frozen to death)
- Fish suffer in crowded and polluted water
- When fish feed comes from smaller fish, there are environmental impacts of wild-catching smaller fish for feed
- Food is sometimes withheld before slaughter to empty the gut
- “Under farming conditions, fish are often unable to express their natural behaviors. For instance, tilapia, a nesting species, are generally unable to form nests when raised in barren aquaculture tanks or ponds.”
- As a result of being genetically engineered, fish may live generally more painful lives. And these engineered fish may also escape and cause havoc on the gene pool of wild fish
I'd be curious to get views from vegetarians on the forum: If there was a fish farm that systematically addressed all these concerns, would you feel comfortable eating fish from it? If not, are there other concerns that if added to the list and addressed, would satisfy you?
Not an answer, but note that there are plausible theories that some kinds of fish might not suffer as much as others from the same conditions.
I also think that slaughter can be done humanely. It is possible some kinds of slaughter don't inflict any suffering on the fish.
However, many of the traits above might be concentrated in species of fish that when farmed, have to live for very long periods of time, so suffering is larger.
Also, none of the above might be true. I was thinking of river carp as not migrating, but actually they do, at least in one species.
I am cautious about writing this. But I think it is important to get a sense of animal experiences, which could differ a lot between species and be important in their suffering.
Yeah this uncertainty with regards to fish experience makes this really hard. I suppose this raises the bar in terms of what I would need to eat fish. We need to understand fish welfare better (for a given species) before we can confidently mitigate harm, likely erring on the side of not promoting fish farming until we’re confident we understand fish welfare for the given species of fish.