Aquaculture produces half the world's seafood but welfare standards for farmed fish lag far behind those for land animals.
Fish welfare in aquaculture is a rapidly emerging field because the scale is enormous — hundreds of billions of individual fish are farmed annually — and baseline welfare standards are minimal. Crowded pens, sea lice infestations, poor water quality, handling stress during grading and transport, and inhumane slaughter methods are common welfare problems across the sector. The development of species-specific welfare indicators for key farmed species like salmon, tilapia, and sea bass is advancing but implementation in certification schemes remains inconsistent.