A recent study published in Cambridge University’s Animal Welfare journal (Mood et al., 2023) estimates the number of farmed fishes slaughtered for food in global aquaculture from 1990 to 2019. The study authors first noted that, unlike other forms of animal agriculture, aquaculture production is typically reported as “biomass” rather than number of individual animals. The authors sought to highlight the individual toll, given the welfare issues associated with aquaculture and the growing body of evidence that fish are sentient beings capable of feeling pain—not merely brainless, undifferentiated biomass.
The study estimated that 124 billion farmed fish were slaughtered for food in 2019, a nine-fold increase since 1990. Despite the fact that the World Organisation for Animal Health first established welfare codes for farmed fish in 1995, the authors found that at least 70 percent of farmed fish have no protection under countries’ animal welfare laws, and less than 1 percent have fish-specific legal protection at slaughter.