Scientific understanding of fish sentience has advanced rapidly in recent decades, with mounting evidence for pain experience that has major welfare implications for fisheries and aquaculture.
The evidence for fish sentience no longer allows dismissal of fish welfare as inconsequential. Fish likely experience pain in a functionally meaningful way, even if the subjective experience differs from mammalian pain. This has profound implications for the billions of fish caught and farmed each year, most of whom are killed without any welfare consideration.