Common carp is the most farmed freshwater fish globally, particularly in Eastern Europe and Asia, with welfare standards that lag behind those applied to other major species.
Carp welfare is an underdeveloped field despite the enormous production scale. Traditional extensive pond culture provides relatively good environmental conditions, but harvest and transport practices are often poor. Live retail sale involving prolonged confinement in plastic bags or small tanks, and live slaughter by consumers without stunning, causes significant suffering that could be prevented by simple pre-slaughter stunning. As the most produced farmed fish species globally, improvements to carp welfare — particularly at harvest, transport and slaughter — would affect more individual fish than improvements to any other single aquaculture species.