Eel aquaculture involves species with poorly understood welfare needs and high mortality rates, with welfare science lagging far behind the scale of production.
Farmed eel welfare represents an area where the precautionary principle and scientific uncertainty intersect with significant production scale. Eels demonstrate avoidance responses to noxious stimuli and have nociceptive capacity, suggesting welfare consideration is appropriate even amid uncertainty about their subjective experience. Live chilling followed by gutting without anesthesia is a slaughter method that raises welfare concerns given the time to insensibility. The wild-capture-to-farm supply chain for glass eels represents both conservation harm and welfare concern. The relative lack of welfare research for eels means that standards are poorly developed relative to other aquaculture species.