Sustainable fisheries certification from programs like the Marine Stewardship Council addresses environmental sustainability but gives limited attention to fish welfare. Understanding this gap helps welfare advocates engage with fisheries certification reform.
Sustainable fisheries certification represents genuine progress in addressing the environmental impacts of fishing — but a significant welfare gap. MSC-certified fish can be caught by methods that cause prolonged suffering — drowning on longlines over hours, crushing in trawl nets, slow death by suffocation on deck — and receive the same certification as fisheries using more welfare-positive capture and slaughter methods. The welfare case for expanding certification criteria to include capture and slaughter welfare is strong: welfare-positive methods exist for many species, and consumers who seek sustainable seafood increasingly want assurance about animal suffering as well as ecological sustainability. Some certification programs are beginning to engage with this gap, but integration of welfare criteria into mainstream sustainability certification remains at an early stage.