Humane slaughter of farmed fish requires effective stunning before killing, but a majority of farmed fish globally are still killed without prior stunning, experiencing a prolonged death that welfare science indicates may involve significant suffering.
The slaughter welfare of fish represents one of the largest-scale welfare problems in global food production. Evidence now strongly supports that fish can experience pain and that unstunned killing by asphyxiation or ice slurry immersion causes a prolonged dying process that may involve significant suffering. The scale — hundreds of billions of individual animals annually — makes improvements in fish stunning one of the highest-impact potential welfare interventions in food production. Technical solutions exist: electrical stunning produces immediate insensibility when correctly applied, and percussive stunning is effective for larger fish. The primary barriers are cost, industry inertia, and the absence of mandatory regulatory requirements in most countries. Consumer demand for humane slaughter standards is growing and represents market leverage for change.