Carp are the most widely farmed fish globally by volume — their welfare needs and the challenges of improving welfare at scale.
Carp represent the largest welfare gap in global aquaculture: the most volume-produced farmed fish with among the least developed welfare science and the least regulatory attention. The combination of scale — hundreds of billions of carp produced annually — and welfare neglect creates a potentially enormous aggregate welfare problem. Carp nociception and stress responses have been studied sufficiently to confirm their capacity for pain-relevant experience, but this knowledge has not translated into production standards or slaughter requirements in major producing countries. Addressing carp welfare requires the same pathway as other farmed fish: building the welfare science evidence base, developing practical welfare indicators, and creating regulatory frameworks that require minimum standards.