The final hours of farmed salmon lives involve stressful crowding and handling before slaughter. Improving pre-slaughter welfare is an achievable and impactful priority.
Pre-slaughter welfare in salmon farming represents a significant area where rapid improvement is both technically feasible and economically incentivised. The final hours of a farmed salmon life can involve dense crowding during harvesting, pump transfer stress, extended air exposure, and slaughter without stunning. Each of these stages causes measurable physiological stress responses in animals that the scientific literature confirms can experience nociception. Percussive stunning immediately before bleeding is the current welfare standard of practice; its adoption is growing but remains incomplete across the global industry. Consumer and retailer pressure is an effective lever for accelerating this change.