Recently, LAWS supported an event on farmed fish welfare at the Scottish Parliament, led by the Humane League.
Here is an overview of this important, but too often forgotten, animal welfare issue, written for LAWS by Georgie Hancock from the Humane League.
The Humane League UK are standing up for farmed fish, the forgotten victims of factory farming. We are calling for the UK governments to implement species-specific legislation for farmed fish at the time of their killing, including mandatory stunning requirements.
It’s estimated that a staggering 77 million fish are farmed in the UK each year – that’s around 100 fish killed every minute. This makes fish the second largest group of farmed animals in the UK, after chickens.
In spite of this, and the fact that their sentience is well recognised, farmed fish are not given the same legal protections at the time of slaughter as terrestrial farmed animals.
The vast majority of salmon farms and approximately half of trout farms are signed up to voluntary accreditation schemes, such as RSPCA assured, which include species-specific guidelines for slaughter. However these are not legally enforceable; farms can withdraw from schemes as they see fit. It should not be the responsibility of accreditation schemes to set the minimum standards. This is the role of legislation.
Including species-specific regulations for farmed fish at the time of their slaughter is an easy win for UK governments.
It is something that has support from the fish farming industry itself, and would make a difference to up to 77 million sentient beings. This update to legislation would set a precedent that fish matter in the eyes of the law and they deserve to be protected, especially when they are at their most vulnerable.
For Labour, this would go a massive way to delivering on the commitment of the greatest boost to animal welfare in a generation.
