The harvest process for farmed fish is a critical welfare window that receives insufficient attention in most aquaculture systems.
Fish harvest welfare is among the most neglected areas of aquaculture welfare management. Most farmed fish globally are killed through processes that cause significant pre-slaughter suffering: suffocation, live chilling, or carbon dioxide exposure. Effective stunning methods exist — electrical, percussive, and CO2 for some species — but adoption is limited by cost and logistics. The scale of farmed fish production — over 100 billion individuals annually — makes harvest welfare improvement one of the highest-priority welfare interventions available.