The final days of farmed salmon involve crowding, food withdrawal, transport, and slaughter. This period concentrates welfare harms that better industry practices can substantially reduce.
Pre-slaughter handling concentrates welfare harms that have been allowed to persist because the period is brief and invisible to consumers. The sequence of events — food withdrawal, extreme crowding, pumping through transfer systems, and then slaughter — creates a cascade of stressors for animals that have otherwise been managed carefully throughout their production cycle. The irony is that welfare improvements during grow-out do not protect fish from this final concentrated period of suffering. Norway's progress on percussive stunning and the phasing out of CO2 stunning demonstrates that industry can implement welfare improvements at scale. Consumer expectations communicated through certification demands and retail standards are the most effective levers for accelerating improvement in slaughter welfare across the global salmon industry.