Fish Welfare at Slaughter | Animal Welfare Hub

The welfare of farmed fish at slaughter is one of the most significant and underregulated aspects of aquaculture. Advances in stunning technology are improving outcomes but adoption remains inconsistent.

Key Facts

An estimated 73-180 billion farmed fish are slaughtered globally each year — far more individuals than any other farmed vertebrate species
Live chilling in ice slurry, previously the most common slaughter method for salmon, causes prolonged consciousness during cooling and is increasingly considered inhumane
Percussive stunning followed by gill cutting is the current gold standard for salmon welfare at slaughter; electrical stunning is also used
The RSPCA Assured standard for salmon requires percussive stunning before any further processing; equivalent standards exist in several other markets
Fish show nociception and stress responses comparable to mammals during poorly executed slaughter; the welfare case for effective stunning is scientifically robust

Welfare Considerations

Fish slaughter welfare is one of the most important and underaddressed welfare frontiers in food production. The sheer scale — tens of billions of individual fish — means that welfare improvements at slaughter have enormous aggregate impact even if improvements per individual seem modest. The science is clear: fish experience pain and stress during inhumane slaughter methods including live chilling, CO2 narcosis in water, and bleeding out while conscious. Effective percussive or electrical stunning eliminates the welfare cost of conscious killing at negligible additional cost in well-managed facilities. The barriers to adoption are regulatory — no universal requirement exists — and commercial — some operators accept welfare compromise to avoid capital investment. Consumer and retailer pressure, alongside regulatory mandation, are the most effective levers for accelerating adoption of humane fish slaughter standards.

What You Can Do

Choose farmed fish products from suppliers with certified humane slaughter standards including percussive or electrical stunning
Advocate for mandatory humane slaughter standards for farmed fish in all major producing countries
Engage with supermarket retailers about their fish supplier welfare requirements at slaughter
Support research into scalable, cost-effective stunning methods for smaller farmed fish species where technology is less developed
Share the scientific evidence that fish feel pain during inhumane slaughter to build public understanding and policy support