The salmon industry is transitioning from inhumane slaughter by CO2 or suffocation toward percussive and electrical stunning. This welfare improvement is being driven by science, regulation, and consumer demand.
Salmon slaughter welfare has undergone substantial improvement over the past decade, driven by a combination of welfare science, regulatory action, and market pressure. The transition from CO2 and suffocation to percussive and electrical stunning represents genuine progress — these methods, properly applied, render fish unconscious before death rather than allowing them to suffocate or experience the distress of CO2 exposure. The challenge is consistency of implementation across all operations and firm sizes. Ongoing monitoring of stunning effectiveness, rapid adoption of calibrated in-water electrical stunning for large-scale operations, and regulatory harmonisation across producing countries are all needed to complete the welfare transition.