Salmon is America’s favourite fish to eat. Farming them is especially merciless.

[ad_1] This story is a part of a collection supported by Animal Charity Evaluators, which obtained a grant from EarthShare.

The previous few a long time have seen, arguably, essentially the most sweeping transformation in how people produce meat, and it has nothing to do with chickens, pigs, or cows. It has to do with fish.

Over half of the world’s seafood now comes from fish farms, which resemble underwater manufacturing facility farms. Chickens, pigs, and cows had been domesticated over 1000's of years, however fish have been domesticated in below a century. It’s created critical welfare points, particularly for salmon. Salmon are carnivorous and migrate 1000's of miles. On farms, they’re diminished to swimming in small tanks and consuming pellets. Fish farming has taken over the seafood sector, however some specialists argue that it’s moved too quick, and we have to higher perceive welfare points. Historically, the overwhelming majority of fish that folks eat has come from the ocean. However in 2022, humanity hit a major milestone: Seafood corporations started to boost extra fish on farms than they caught from the ocean. They usually farm astonishingly massive numbers of fish — in tiny, cramped enclosures that resemble underwater factory farms .

It quantities to the quickest and largest animal domestication undertaking that humanity has ever undertaken.

For many of the land animals we eat at present, domestication — or, as French fish researcher Fabrice Teletchea defined it, the “lengthy and countless course of throughout which animals turn into, generations after generations, extra tailored to each captive circumstances and people” — has taken place over 1000's of years. “In distinction,” a crew of marine biologists wrote within the journal Science in 2007, the rise of fish farming “is a recent phenomenon,” taking off on a business scale across the Seventies.

By the early 2000s, people had been farming well over 200 aquatic animal species , just about all of which had been domesticated or compelled into unnatural circumstances in excessive captivity over the course of the earlier century, with many in simply the prior decade. To place it one other approach, the marine biologists wrote, aquatic domestication occurred 100 occasions quicker than the domestication of land animals — and on a vastly bigger scale. As we speak, some 80 billion land animals are farmed yearly, whereas an estimated 763 billion fish and crustaceans are farmed every year, a determine projected to quickly grow within the decade forward.

What’s extra, this try to speedrun domestication occurred at the same time as a clear scientific consensus emerged in latest a long time that fish can undergo and really feel ache.

The revolution in how people produce seafood has huge implications for our relationship with species we’ve barely given any thought to. To grasp why, take into account America’s favourite fish to eat, and one of the vital tough to farm: salmon.

Salmon farming is a comparatively new trade, and it emerged largely in response to artifical issues.

Over the past century, overfishing — mixed with industrial air pollution, local weather change, and heavy damming — has decimated wild Atlantic salmon populations. By 2000, the species gained safety below the Endangered Species Act after it was practically pushed to extinction within the US, successfully banning the business fishing of Atlantic salmon.

Salmon populations in Europe, together with Pacific salmon populations on the West Coast of the US and past, have additionally skilled important declines.

To take strain off depleted wild populations, seafood producers started to scale salmon farming within the Seventies, with ample assist from governments within the type of R&D, grants, state financing packages, and extra. It’s confirmed to be a smashing business success.

<img alt="" data-chromatic="ignore" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-nimg="fill" class="mvmjsc0" style="position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url("data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' %3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'/%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'/%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'/%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mN8+R8AAtcB6oaHtZcAAAAASUVORK5CYII='/%3E%3C/svg%3E")" sizes="(max-width: 639px) 100vw, (max-width: 1023px) 50vw, 700px" srcset="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM33113.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C5.5555555555556%2C100%2C88.888888888889&w=256 256w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM33113.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C5.5555555555556%2C100%2C88.888888888889&w=376 376w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM33113.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C5.5555555555556%2C100%2C88.888888888889&w=384 384w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM33113.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C5.5555555555556%2C100%2C88.888888888889&w=415 415w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM33113.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C5.5555555555556%2C100%2C88.888888888889&w=480 480w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM33113.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C5.5555555555556%2C100%2C88.888888888889&w=540 540w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM33113.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C5.5555555555556%2C100%2C88.888888888889&w=640 640w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM33113.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C5.5555555555556%2C100%2C88.888888888889&w=750 750w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM33113.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C5.5555555555556%2C100%2C88.888888888889&w=828 828w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM33113.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C5.5555555555556%2C100%2C88.888888888889&w=1080 1080w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM33113.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C5.5555555555556%2C100%2C88.888888888889&w=1200 1200w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM33113.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C5.5555555555556%2C100%2C88.888888888889&w=1440 1440w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM33113.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C5.5555555555556%2C100%2C88.888888888889&w=1920 1920w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM33113.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C5.5555555555556%2C100%2C88.888888888889&w=2048 2048w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM33113.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C5.5555555555556%2C100%2C88.888888888889&w=2400 2400w" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM33113.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C5.5555555555556%2C100%2C88.888888888889&w=2400"/> Farmed salmon swim in circles close to the ocean floor inside a fish farm’s open web pens. Renata Valdivia/Sinergia Animal/We Animals

<img alt="" data-chromatic="ignore" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-nimg="fill" class="mvmjsc0" style="position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url("data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' %3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'/%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'/%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'/%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mN8+R8AAtcB6oaHtZcAAAAASUVORK5CYII='/%3E%3C/svg%3E")" sizes="(max-width: 639px) 100vw, (max-width: 1023px) 50vw, 700px" srcset="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM45340.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=7.8125%2C0%2C84.375%2C100&w=256 256w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM45340.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=7.8125%2C0%2C84.375%2C100&w=376 376w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM45340.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=7.8125%2C0%2C84.375%2C100&w=384 384w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM45340.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=7.8125%2C0%2C84.375%2C100&w=415 415w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM45340.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=7.8125%2C0%2C84.375%2C100&w=480 480w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM45340.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=7.8125%2C0%2C84.375%2C100&w=540 540w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM45340.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=7.8125%2C0%2C84.375%2C100&w=640 640w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM45340.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=7.8125%2C0%2C84.375%2C100&w=750 750w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM45340.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=7.8125%2C0%2C84.375%2C100&w=828 828w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM45340.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=7.8125%2C0%2C84.375%2C100&w=1080 1080w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM45340.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=7.8125%2C0%2C84.375%2C100&w=1200 1200w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM45340.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=7.8125%2C0%2C84.375%2C100&w=1440 1440w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM45340.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=7.8125%2C0%2C84.375%2C100&w=1920 1920w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM45340.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=7.8125%2C0%2C84.375%2C100&w=2048 2048w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM45340.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=7.8125%2C0%2C84.375%2C100&w=2400 2400w" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/WAM45340.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=7.8125%2C0%2C84.375%2C100&w=2400"/> With greater than 200 farms dotted round its coast, Scotland is without doubt one of the largest producers of farmed Atlantic salmon in Europe. Patrick Gill/We Animals

Final yr, salmon farming corporations — that are most concentrated in Norway, Chile, and the UK and export their product around the globe — produced 2.8 million metric tons of the fish, or round 560 million particular person salmon. They’re sometimes raised in tanks on land till they’re a yr previous then transferred to nets and cages floating within the ocean simply offshore to be fattened up and finally slaughtered (they’re speculated to be rendered unconscious previous to slaughter, with both electrical beautiful or a club to the head , although some aren’t efficiently shocked).

About one out of each 5 are shipped off to the US, the place “younger prosperous shoppers like to eat salmon,” according to the Norwegian firm Mowi, the world’s largest salmon producer.

<img alt="" data-chromatic="ignore" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-nimg="fill" class="mvmjsc0" style="position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url("data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' %3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'/%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'/%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'/%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mN8+R8AAtcB6oaHtZcAAAAASUVORK5CYII='/%3E%3C/svg%3E")" sizes="(max-width: 639px) 100vw, (max-width: 1023px) 50vw, 700px" srcset="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/n6RUl-global-salmon-farming-has-boomed-in-recent-decades-.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=256 256w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/n6RUl-global-salmon-farming-has-boomed-in-recent-decades-.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=376 376w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/n6RUl-global-salmon-farming-has-boomed-in-recent-decades-.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=384 384w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/n6RUl-global-salmon-farming-has-boomed-in-recent-decades-.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=415 415w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/n6RUl-global-salmon-farming-has-boomed-in-recent-decades-.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=480 480w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/n6RUl-global-salmon-farming-has-boomed-in-recent-decades-.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=540 540w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/n6RUl-global-salmon-farming-has-boomed-in-recent-decades-.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=640 640w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/n6RUl-global-salmon-farming-has-boomed-in-recent-decades-.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=750 750w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/n6RUl-global-salmon-farming-has-boomed-in-recent-decades-.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=828 828w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/n6RUl-global-salmon-farming-has-boomed-in-recent-decades-.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1080 1080w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/n6RUl-global-salmon-farming-has-boomed-in-recent-decades-.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1200 1200w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/n6RUl-global-salmon-farming-has-boomed-in-recent-decades-.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1440 1440w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/n6RUl-global-salmon-farming-has-boomed-in-recent-decades-.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1920 1920w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/n6RUl-global-salmon-farming-has-boomed-in-recent-decades-.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2048 2048w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/n6RUl-global-salmon-farming-has-boomed-in-recent-decades-.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400 2400w" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/n6RUl-global-salmon-farming-has-boomed-in-recent-decades-.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400"/> This style for salmon and the farming trade it has necessitated has, in only a few generations, dramatically remodeled what it means to be a salmon. Within the wild, salmon reside extremely advanced lives and embark on epic journeys. However on farms, they'll’t do any of that.

In keeping with Becca Franks, an assistant professor of environmental research at New York College, salmon farming has created grave welfare issues by denying the animals the power to have interaction in two of their important pure behaviors: migrating and searching.

Within the US, Atlantic salmon start their lives as eggs buried a foot below freshwater riverbeds in Maine, the place they continue to be for six months till they hatch and emerge looking for meals. At just a few years previous, they migrate lots of of miles northward into the salty Atlantic ocean, then lots of of miles additional out into the Labrador Sea, close to Greenland. There, they shortly placed on weight — feeding on krill, herring, and crustaceans — which they’ll want for the lengthy journey house that they make after a pair years of eating out at sea.

Following scents and utilizing the earth’s magnetic area, Atlantic salmon swim over 1,000 miles again to their house streams to spawn the following era.

The salmon’s life cycle conjures up extra awe and reverence than most species within the animal kingdom, however on farms, they’re diminished to swimming in tiny circles for years and subsisting on small, artifical pellets. Their “welfare is harmed by lack of company and selection,” Franks informed me in an e mail. She likens salmon farming to attempting to farm tigers.

Sophie Ryan, CEO of the Global Salmon Initiative — a coalition of salmon farming corporations — challenged the concept that domestication has harmed salmon. “They've been domesticated over greater than 50 years — just like cattle or poultry — and have been selectively bred to thrive in a farm surroundings,” Ryan informed me in an e mail. “Their dietary wants, swimming patterns, and power use are totally different from wild salmon, as a result of their surroundings and function are totally different.”

The selective breeding that Ryan speaks of has been used to make farmed salmon develop twice as fast as their wild counterparts, which has led to numerous critical well being points: heart problems , spinal deformities , high levels of deafness , and increased risk of an early death . They’re additionally extra aggressive than wild salmon.

To spice up development even additional, salmon farms maintain their lights on as much as 24 hours a day , which makes the fish eat extra and may damage their retinas .

And in a regarding twist, the domestication of farmed salmon is hurting wild salmon. Because the Seventies, tens of millions of farmed salmon have managed to flee and compete for assets with wild salmon and even mate with them, resulting in “genetic air pollution” that has resulted in a hybrid line of salmon.

“We might now want to acknowledge a brand new organic entity — Salmo domesticus ,” biologist Mart Gross wrote in a 1998 paper , “and deal with it as an ‘unique’ when it escapes into the wild.”

Some analysis has discovered that these hybrid fish have lower survival rates . That signifies that the farming of salmon, which was meant to offer wild salmon populations a break, created a brand new problem for them.

“Escape prevention is a prime precedence, with ongoing enhancements in web energy, mooring methods, and real-time digital monitoring,” Ryan of the International Salmon Initiative stated. “The place escapes do happen, corporations are required to report them and work with regulators to evaluate potential impacts on wild populations.”

Franks considers fish farming a type of “captive dewilding” : the method of modifying animals to adapt to captivity and to the harms that befall them in consequence. And the truth of that captivity will be extremely merciless.

In 2019, animal rights activist Erin Wing worked undercover with the group Animal Outlook for 4 months at a salmon hatchery in Maine operated by Cooke Aquaculture, one of many world’s largest salmon farming corporations. Wing documented staff culling diseased fish by hitting them towards the edges of tanks a number of occasions; fish thrown into buckets nonetheless alive, left to suffocate or be crushed to demise by different fish; fish born with spinal deformities; and fish dying from nasty fungal ailments that ate away components of their faces.

“Over time, you kinda get desensitized,” one worker informed her.

In response to Wing’s investigation, Cooke Aquaculture CEO Glenn Cooke stated in a statement that the corporate would re-train workers on the Maine facility. “We place animal welfare excessive in our working requirements and endeavor to boost our animals with optimum care and consideration of finest observe,” Cooke stated, including that “what we noticed at present is most definitely not reflective of those requirements.”

Wing, who has spent her profession investigating manufacturing facility farms, is skeptical of trade requirements. “There are these [animal welfare] industry standards which can be in place, and there are these tips, however on the finish of the day, there’s not likely any enforcement,” Wing informed me. “So these farms will make up no matter guidelines they need that can work for them, for his or her staff, after which they’ll function as they see match. And that normally ends in lots of these animals struggling needlessly.”

Among the struggling stems from placing farmed animals within the ocean, as crowding lots of of 1000's of salmon collectively in open waters attracts sea lice — tiny, painful parasites that feed on the salmon’s pores and skin and may even kill them. In 2023, almost 17 percent of Norwegian farmed salmon died earlier than they might be slaughtered for meat, largely from infectious diseases and injuries .

<img alt="A close-up of a salmon underwater, covered in small sea lice." data-chromatic="ignore" loading="lazy" decoding="async" data-nimg="fill" class="mvmjsc0" style="position:absolute;height:100%;width:100%;left:0;top:0;right:0;bottom:0;color:transparent;background-size:cover;background-position:50% 50%;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-image:url("data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf-8,%3Csvg xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg' %3E%3Cfilter id='b' color-interpolation-filters='sRGB'%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3CfeColorMatrix values='1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 100 -1' result='s'/%3E%3CfeFlood x='0' y='0' width='100%25' height='100%25'/%3E%3CfeComposite operator='out' in='s'/%3E%3CfeComposite in2='SourceGraphic'/%3E%3CfeGaussianBlur stdDeviation='20'/%3E%3C/filter%3E%3Cimage width='100%25' height='100%25' x='0' y='0' preserveAspectRatio='none' style='filter: url(%23b);' href='data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAQAAAC1HAwCAAAAC0lEQVR42mN8+R8AAtcB6oaHtZcAAAAASUVORK5CYII='/%3E%3C/svg%3E")" sizes="(max-width: 639px) 100vw, (max-width: 1023px) 50vw, 700px" srcset="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/230702-Torridon-Farm-vlcsnap-2023-09-12-13h57m56s577.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=256 256w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/230702-Torridon-Farm-vlcsnap-2023-09-12-13h57m56s577.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=376 376w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/230702-Torridon-Farm-vlcsnap-2023-09-12-13h57m56s577.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=384 384w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/230702-Torridon-Farm-vlcsnap-2023-09-12-13h57m56s577.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=415 415w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/230702-Torridon-Farm-vlcsnap-2023-09-12-13h57m56s577.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=480 480w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/230702-Torridon-Farm-vlcsnap-2023-09-12-13h57m56s577.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=540 540w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/230702-Torridon-Farm-vlcsnap-2023-09-12-13h57m56s577.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=640 640w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/230702-Torridon-Farm-vlcsnap-2023-09-12-13h57m56s577.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=750 750w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/230702-Torridon-Farm-vlcsnap-2023-09-12-13h57m56s577.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=828 828w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/230702-Torridon-Farm-vlcsnap-2023-09-12-13h57m56s577.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1080 1080w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/230702-Torridon-Farm-vlcsnap-2023-09-12-13h57m56s577.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1200 1200w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/230702-Torridon-Farm-vlcsnap-2023-09-12-13h57m56s577.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1440 1440w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/230702-Torridon-Farm-vlcsnap-2023-09-12-13h57m56s577.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=1920 1920w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/230702-Torridon-Farm-vlcsnap-2023-09-12-13h57m56s577.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2048 2048w, https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/230702-Torridon-Farm-vlcsnap-2023-09-12-13h57m56s577.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400 2400w" src="https://platform.vox.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/230702-Torridon-Farm-vlcsnap-2023-09-12-13h57m56s577.png?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0%2C0%2C100%2C100&w=2400"/> In 2020, UK-based animal rights group Viva! documented salmon lined in sea lice at a farm in Scotland. Viva!

To fight the scourge of sea lice, salmon farmers had, for years, dumped chemical substances into the water to kill them, together with antibiotics and different chemical substances to guard the fish from a spread of fungal and viral ailments. These pollution, mixed with huge quantities of animal waste generated by the salmon, fall to the ocean flooring and pollute marine ecosystems.

That, in flip, contributes to what Franks calls “environmental dewilding,” or the method of modifying pure water our bodies with synthetic infrastructure — on this case, fish farm pens and cages — and polluting them.

Sea lice have since developed resistance to those chemical substances, so, during the last decade, salmon farmers have switched to other methods — together with subjecting salmon to high heat — which may trigger pain, injuries, and death .

The Worldwide Salmon Farmers Affiliation and the International Seafood Alliance didn’t reply to interview requests.

If we settle for that farming salmon is unhealthy for them and the environments wherein they’re raised — and that we should always defend dwindling wild populations — then we’ll have to just accept consuming lots much less salmon. We’ll additionally must rethink the moral implications of farming many different fish species.

Honest Fish, a crew of fish welfare researchers, has in contrast the pure conduct and welfare wants of nearly 100 fish species with the circumstances they expertise on farms. Out of the 100 analyzed species, solely two — tilapia and carp — have “the potential to be farmed in considerably respectable circumstances,” based on João Saraiva , who researches fish ethology on the Centre of Marine Sciences in Faro, Portugal, and runs the nonprofit Fish Etho Group . However that doesn’t imply that they really are; each tilapia and carp farms are typically overcrowded, with poor water high quality and excessive charges of illness. (Saraiva has labored with Honest Fish on its analyses however is not concerned within the undertaking.)

In contrast, he stated, salmon is “approach down on the listing,” that means it’s particularly exhausting for farms to fulfill their primary welfare wants.

Honest Fish’s analysis demonstrates how little consideration the fish farming trade, and the governments that helped it take over the seafood sector, has paid to the easy query of how its captives expertise being farmed. It additionally illustrates the injury we are able to do once we flatten “fish” — an extremely various group of species — right into a monolith.

Franks stated trade and authorities must pump the brakes on the enlargement of fish and crustacean farming, which is at the moment the world’s fastest-growing agricultural sector , noting, “I feel we shouldn't be farming any new species of fish or crustaceans and placing in transition packages for folk already farming these species to maneuver in the direction of seaweeds and bivalves.” The latter is a category of invertebrate animals that features scallops, oysters, and mussels, which Franks stated have far fewer environmental and welfare considerations than farmed fish and crustaceans (whether or not bivalves are sentient or can really feel ache stays an ongoing scientific debate ).

She’s one of many few teachers finding out fish farming keen to go there , to recommend that we must essentially rethink how we produce seafood and the way a lot of it we eat. “I feel there's a enormous reluctance to even broach the potential for shifting diets away” from animal protein, stated Franks.

When the worldwide fish farming increase took off, many within the area had good intentions, and it appeared good on paper; a option to increase the worldwide meals provide with out additional exploiting oceans. Plus, fish are likely to have a decrease carbon footprint than farmed land species (although increased than plant-based proteins). However few questions had been requested about what it might imply, ethically and environmentally, to quickly cultivate, then confine and slaughter, lots of of billions of animals yearly with distinct wants — not to mention the capability to really feel ache.

Researchers like Saraiva and Franks try to persuade the world to meet up with what we now find out about fish and to additional increase our information. As shoppers, we can assist, and we are able to begin by considering twice in regards to the salmon on our plates.

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