The final hours and minutes of a farmed salmon's life significantly affect its welfare outcomes. Pre-slaughter handling practices including crowding, pumping, and air exposure cause significant stress that humane methods can prevent.
Pre-slaughter welfare for farmed salmon is a high-impact welfare frontier because the scale involves billions of individual fish annually. Welfare improvements at slaughter are achievable and economically incentivized since humane handling actually improves product quality. Key interventions include minimizing crowding duration before harvest, using water-to-water transfer systems instead of air exposure, and implementing effective percussion or electrical stunning that renders fish insensible before bleeding. Certification schemes like the RSPCA Assured standard for salmon require improved pre-slaughter practices, providing a market mechanism for welfare improvement.