Carp aquaculture produces more animal biomass than any other sector — the welfare gap for these numerically dominant farmed animals requires urgent attention.
Carp welfare reform requires engaging with a production system dominated by small-scale producers in China, India, and Southeast Asia where regulatory approaches face implementation challenges. The scale of carp production means even modest welfare improvements affecting a fraction of producers represent welfare improvements for hundreds of millions of individual fish. The priority interventions are: pre-slaughter stunning adoption (electrical methods are feasible and affordable), water quality thresholds defined for welfare rather than just production, and inclusion of carp in international aquaculture welfare standards frameworks. International certification schemes that exclude carp from their scope effectively ignore the largest sector — welfare advocates should prioritize carp inclusion in existing frameworks rather than creating parallel carp-specific standards.