How pre-slaughter handling practices affect salmon welfare and what improvements can minimize suffering at end of life.
The final hours and minutes of a farmed salmon life are frequently among the worst from a welfare perspective, combining the accumulated stress of crowding, handling and unfamiliar conditions with slaughter methods that may not reliably or quickly induce unconsciousness. This matters profoundly because the capacity for suffering in fish is now well-established, and the scale of salmon aquaculture means that improvements in pre-slaughter handling represent one of the largest per-unit welfare gains available in food animal production. Consumer and retailer pressure has driven meaningful improvements in poultry and livestock slaughter; similar pressure applied to the salmon industry could achieve comparable welfare advances for the billions of salmon killed annually.