Sustainable fisheries certification programs address ecological sustainability but largely ignore fish welfare — a significant gap given that billions of wild-caught fish experience distress at capture and slaughter.
Sustainability certification for wild fisheries has transformed consumer choices around ecological impact while leaving fish welfare almost entirely unaddressed. A product can carry an MSC sustainability label while being caught using methods that cause hours or days of distress before death, and while being killed by asphyxiation without any stunning. This gap reflects the historical exclusion of fish welfare from fisheries policy — fish were not considered welfare-relevant entities when certification frameworks were developed. Integrating welfare criteria into sustainability certification would address both the ecological and ethical dimensions of consumer seafood choices through a single trusted mechanism.