The welfare implications of different fish slaughter methods and the evidence for which stunning techniques best minimize suffering.
Fish slaughter is one of the largest sources of preventable animal suffering in the modern food system, both in absolute numbers and in the proportion of individuals slaughtered without any attempt to render them unconscious first. This is not a situation where welfare improvement awaits scientific clarification — the evidence that fish have pain-relevant neurology and that most current slaughter methods cause suffering is strong. The barrier is economic and cultural: stunning equipment costs money, slows processing lines, and requires operator training. These are solvable problems. The scale of the welfare harm they perpetuate makes solving them urgent.