‘Sustainable fish' is a rising trend in responsible shopping. But sustainable just means we are being more mindful of our fish stocks, we do very little to ensure farm or wild caught fish is cruelty free.
George Monbiot writes “ Stop Eating Fish . It’s the only way to save the life in our seas”. There has been mass media coverage about plastic pollution in our oceans, it is clear that water pollution, climate breakdown, the acidification of the ocean, disruption to the flow of rivers and overfishing are all leading to a tipping point for total collapse of life in our rivers and oceans. This is a very stark reality, so when the message is just to stop eating fish, why should we be concerned with the welfare of fish?
Why do we need to Rethink fish ?
Around 100 billion fish from farms and between 1-2 trillion wild caught fish are killed a year . This is a huge industry with massive impacts. We urgently need a change of mindset, we need to change how we view our food, we need to wake up to the suffering that humans cause and how ultimately it brings suffering to ourselves.
SUPPORTED BY ECO REBELS LIKE YOU
Support independent eco journalism that drives real change.In part because of clever food marketing, people may think that caring for our oceans means only buying MSC (Marine Stewardship Council) certified products, or those labelled as being from sustainable sources.
These labels do not communicate the fact that the fish may have taken a quarter of an hour to die, slowly asphyxiating, or that our farmed sea bass has been dumped onto ice slurry to die — a practice so cruel the World Organisation for Animal Health has called for it to end. Being chilled slows down the animal’s metabolic rate so it may be kept alive for longer making the suffering more drawn out.
Much like any ‘farm assurance’ label the MSC label is supposed to reassure us about the fish we buy, but it is no guarantee of sound practice. MSC certified tuna fisheries have been found to have caught and finned endangered sharks and, in UK waters it has approved scallop dredging that rips the seabed to shreds.
The current European Slaughter Regulations (which apply to farmed fish) state that animals “shall be spared any avoidable pain, distress or suffering during their killing and related operations”. This means that for slaughter to be humane fish should be effectively stunned prior to killing or killed with a method that guarantees an immediate loss of consciousness. The Rethink fish campaign demonstrates the urgent necessity of dramatically improving the very poor standards of current fish welfare. Along with the majority of wild caught fish, the mass amounts of fish farmed in the UK and EU are currently killed using inhumane methods.
Humane methods of killing fish ensure that death is instant or that the fish is made unconscious (ideally within 30 seconds of landing) until death. This may involve stunning, such as hitting the fish with a club or by electric shock, or killing by spiking the brain. These methods need to be properly designed and carried out for the different species of fish for them to be effective and humane.
The barbaric and inhumane ways we have to kill these sentient, sensitive animals should stop. Sustainability is the way forwards if we wish to safeguard life in our oceans, but we must recognise that as well as sustainability we must dramatically improve the welfare of fish. If we continue to demand to eat these creatures we must minimise their suffering and demand higher welfare for them.
