Channel catfish is the most produced farmed fish in the United States, with extensive pond culture raising welfare questions about stocking, disease management, and harvesting.
Channel catfish welfare in extensive pond aquaculture differs from intensive recirculating systems. Summer oxygen depletion events in dense ponds can cause mass mortality events where fish experience hypoxic distress. Harvesting by seining concentrates fish at extremely high densities in nets, causing acute crowding stress, scale loss, and injuries. Disease outbreaks causing mass mortality in pond systems represent both welfare and production failures. Processing of catfish involves killing methods that vary in humaneness across the industry. As evidence for fish sentience grows, developing welfare standards for US catfish production — the country's largest aquaculture sector — is an important regulatory and industry priority.