Welfare regulation for seafood has lagged significantly behind that of other animals harvested for food. But with more focus on the ocean, the focus on how fish and seafood are treated during harvesting is growing. SeafoodWelfare.org has recently released its Model Seafood Welfare Standard (MSWS) which clarifies and fortifies previous regulations.
The standards were developed in cooperation with eight leading animal protection NGOs working on seafood welfare in North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. According to SeafoodWelfare, companies such as Costco, Espresso House, Do&Co catering have committed to the more stringent standards. The organization has a list of suppliers that have agreed to meet the new standards.
Farmed Seafood
The standards for farmed seafood address conditions such as overcrowding that causes stress and aggression among species as well as the proliferation of lice and diseases. “Environments (stocking density, enrichments, crowding, handling and time out of water) must align with Global Animal Partnership, RSPCA, or Naturland standards.
“Water conditions (temperature, pH, turbidity, oxygen, ammonia and carbon dioxide), disease and mortality must be tracked daily. Disease must be prevented with vaccinations and outbreaks treated with medication.”
Common practices such as cutting or searing the eyestalks of shrimp to make them produce more offspring are prohibited. Instead of killing fish by allowing them to asphyxiate or gutting them while alive, the standards say fish must be stunned and killed while unconscious.
Wild-Caught Seafood
The standard prohibits all fishing systems that produce bycatch or create environmental of fish welfare issues. This includes trawlers, dredges, gill nets, explosives, gaffing and ramping. It also prohibits the practice of allowing fish to dangle impaled on hooks, be crammed together with tens of thousands of others in nets for days, or allowing them to slowly asphyxiate on deck instead of immediately slaughtering them after landing.
Using live fish as bait, and removing body parts from sensate animals are also prohibited. Slaughter must use electrical or mechanical stunning to produce instant insensibility followed by death while insensate. Time of capture must be under sixty minutes and time out of water under one minute.
Of nearly 700 hundred pages of suppliers on SeafoodWelfare.org, only three pages feature companies that meet the criteria.
