European eels are critically endangered yet still farmed in large numbers, raising urgent welfare and conservation questions about an industry built on a species facing extinction.
Farming European eels creates a double welfare and conservation problem: the fish themselves are kept in high-density conditions that cause chronic stress, and the wild populations supplying farms are being driven toward extinction. Wild-caught glass eels face massive mortality during transportation and early farming phases. Eels are increasingly recognized as having complex physiological stress responses, making intensive farming inherently welfare-problematic. Continued farming of a critically endangered species that cannot be bred captively is ethically indefensible.