A coalition of more than 20 animal and conservation organisations from around the world have signed an open declaration calling for urgent action including a drastic change in consumer attitudes towards fish and other marine species caught or farmed for our consumption.

According to the Aquatic Life Institute, founding member of the Aquatic Animal Alliance, the welfare of marine animals is largely ignored - despite being farmed in numbers dwarfing those of terrestrial species - and whose capacity to suffer and feel pain is increasingly being recognised.

“Annually, around 100 billion aquatic animals are farmed with a further 2-3 trillion caught in the wild to satiate our growing demand for seafood,” the ALI wrote on its blog. 

“By comparison, this is about 35 times more than all farmed land animals. Yet, the welfare of aquatic animals has been historically neglected.

“Ample evidence shows that many commonly caught and farmed aquatic animals have the capacity to feel pain and suffer just like their land-based cousins. This has led to a growing movement for aquatic animal welfare.”

According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 6.2 per cent of global fish populations are considered “underfished” meaning that 93.8 per cent are being caught either at or in excess of the limit at which their numbers can be sustained. Marine animal farming - also known as aquaculture - is seen as an answer to overfishing and is the fastest-growing food sector in the world, providing more than 50 per cent of the fish we consume, yet it is far from sustainable.

“Roughly a third to a half of all wild-caught fish are used as feed for aquaculture,” said the ALI. “To put this into perspective, one farmed salmon requires roughly 120 anchovies as feed to reach marketable weight. Problems like fish feed inefficiencies, animal welfare concerns and other issues are prompting major institutions to reevaluate their aquaculture development plans going forward.”

Among the solutions proposed by the Aquatic Animal Alliance - whose signatories include Compassion in World Farming, A Plastic Ocean Foundation and Humane Society International - include an appeal to consumers to greatly change their consumption of marine animals. 

“For individuals who are in a position to do so, we absolutely should end or sharply reduce our consumption of aquatic animal products. In order to continue food production under planetary health limits and feed 10 billion people by 2050, the need for a drastic transformation in food systems cannot be stressed enough,” said the coalition.

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The Alliance also called for system change to be achieved by “ending our consumption of aquatic animals, or at least reducing and changing the type of aquatic animals we consume.” The coalition - comprised largely of organisations that promote higher welfare rather than the total abolition of all animal exploitation - proposed a switch to buying “animals that are less problematic to farm such as bivalve species” like mussels, scallops and oysters.

The wording “less problematic” would seem to have been carefully chosen as the science is still out on whether bivalves experience pain or not. But as with crustaceans such as lobsters, and indeed any species whose capacity to feel pain and experience suffering is not well understood, avoiding any risk of these seems the only way to truly guarantee wellbeing, and that means not consuming animals at all.

• Do lobsters feel pain?

• Should we really care if fish feel pain?

The same applies to the Alliance’s third solution - addressing an apparent demand for consumer high-welfare certification schemes.

“Currently, 70 per cent of adults surveyed in Europe are under the false impression that seafood sustainability labels, by default, include the humane treatment of aquatic animals,” said the ALI. “For this reason, we are working with seafood certification schemes from around the world to ensure that the individuals farmed under those regulations are protected by science-backed welfare standards.”

The Alliance argued that with better welfare certification “we can see health improvements that result in less stressed animals, better immune systems, less susceptibility to disease and therefore less reliance on antimicrobials, and higher survival rates.” However, the group admitted that “science is still far from understanding how to provide these animals with good welfare under farming conditions” and that at best farms would only be able to mitigate the causes of health and welfare problems rather than prevent them entirely.

If welfare certification schemes for farmed animals are anything to go by, we expect certification for aquaculture to be equally inadequate and at best a half measure. As recent investigations by Surge and Animal Equality have shown, in the UK whose standards are apparently the envy of the world, assurance schemes Red Tractor and Quality Meat Scotland have failed repeatedly to ensure animal welfare. Even government-monitored CCTV and the presence of a vet cannot guarantee animal welfare, as revealed by Animal Justice Project at the weekend.

A recent investigation by Viva into aquaculture in Scotland revealed shocking conditions on salmon farms, breeding grounds for disease and parasites leading to immense suffering. This is just at a limited number of facilities in Scotland - if the Aquatic Animal Alliance is championing better welfare certification for farms across the world, the challenges they face seem insurmountable. Surely then the solution is not to settle for half measures and impossible goals, but to works towards the end of aquaculture and fishing completely.

Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager for Surge.

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