Feeding farmed fish requires vast quantities of wild-caught fish for fishmeal and fish oil. Understanding this hidden welfare and sustainability dimension informs more conscious choices.
The welfare dimension of aquaculture feed is invisible to most consumers but involves billions of individual animals. Small pelagic fish caught for fishmeal experience capture in massive purse seine nets that squeeze fish together under enormous pressure, suffocation at the surface, and industrial processing that may not kill fish instantly. Whether these fish have morally relevant welfare experiences is debated, but their neurological capacity and behavioral responses suggest the same precautionary welfare consideration as other fish. The scale is enormous - 20 million tonnes of wild fish annually means hundreds of billions of individual fish experiencing harvest conditions. Reducing fishmeal dependency through alternative protein sources is simultaneously a sustainability and welfare improvement.