Common carp and related species are farmed at an enormous scale globally, particularly in Asia and Eastern Europe, with almost no consideration of fish welfare in production practices.
Farmed carp welfare represents a massive and entirely neglected welfare issue. As the most produced freshwater aquaculture fish globally, the welfare of hundreds of millions of carp affects the aggregate suffering calculation enormously. Traditional production and slaughter methods were designed without any welfare consideration. The evidence that carp, like other teleost fish, experience nociception and likely pain makes this neglect increasingly untenable. Consumer markets in Europe and North America create leverage for welfare standard improvements in carp production.