The conditions and procedures in the final hours before slaughter significantly impact farmed salmon welfare. Improvements in pre-slaughter handling reduce suffering at the end of life.
Pre-slaughter welfare for farmed salmon represents a critical welfare window where significant suffering occurs immediately before death. The combination of crowding for harvest, mechanical pumping into crowded tanks, extended transport, starvation periods, and finally slaughter procedures imposes cumulative welfare costs in an already stressed animal. Effective stunning — whether by percussion, electrical means, or CO2 — eliminates conscious suffering during the killing process when properly implemented, but inadequate stunning is common in commercial settings. The integration of pre-slaughter welfare auditing into aquaculture certification schemes, combined with producer investment in more humane slaughter infrastructure, can significantly reduce this end-of-life suffering.