Pre-slaughter starvation of farmed fish is a widespread practice with significant welfare implications that deserves greater attention from consumers and regulators.
Pre-slaughter starvation in fish represents a welfare compromise that has received insufficient attention compared to other aspects of aquaculture welfare. The evidence that fish can experience aversive states including hunger-like distress is now strong enough that prolonged feed withdrawal must be considered a welfare concern. The practice is invisible to consumers and largely unregulated, making it a systemic rather than individual farm problem. Fish that are actively hungry and showing stress behaviors at slaughter also arrive with elevated cortisol levels that may affect flesh quality - creating a partial alignment between welfare and product quality arguments for reducing starvation duration.