Channel catfish and other farmed catfish species are produced in enormous volumes globally, yet receive little welfare attention despite evidence of nociception and complex behavioural needs.
Catfish welfare in intensive production is largely invisible to consumers and policy-makers alike, despite the scale of production and growing evidence that fish — including catfish — possess the neurological substrates for pain experience. High pond densities increase social stress, reduce individual access to preferred microhabitats, and create conditions where disease spreads rapidly. Bacterial disease outbreaks cause painful lesions on fins, skin, and internal organs that impair normal behaviour and reduce quality of life for extended periods before death or recovery. The harvest process — draining ponds, crowding fish, and often killing by carbon dioxide immersion or ice slurry — causes acute distress in animals whose sentience is increasingly recognised. Improving catfish welfare requires extending the same attention given to salmon and trout welfare to all commercially farmed fish species.