Catfish slaughter in aquaculture often involves methods causing prolonged suffering. The large scale of catfish production — particularly in the US and Southeast Asia — makes improving slaughter welfare a high-impact intervention.
Catfish slaughter welfare is among the most neglected in aquaculture. Live skinning, commonly practiced in some markets, causes severe and prolonged pain in animals with well-developed pain perception. Carbon dioxide immersion causes aversive responses before unconsciousness. Electrical stunning is technically feasible and has been validated for channel catfish, but capital costs and lack of regulatory requirements mean it is rarely adopted at small to medium scales. Given the scale of US catfish production alone, mandatory pre-slaughter stunning would represent welfare improvement for hundreds of millions of individual animals annually. Regulatory requirements and certification scheme standards are the primary levers for change.