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FISH

When I decided to explore this topic I was hoping that the information would not be so concerning. However, biologist Victoria Braithwaite In her book ‘Do Fish Feel Pain ? recounts that although fish don’t scream, they do have feelings  and suffer like birds and mammals.

The website fishcount.org.uk  reports that ‘most commercially-caught wild fish, that are alive when landed, die either from being left to suffocate in air, or by a combination of suffocation and disembowelment or gutting’. ‘It was found that a considerable time elapsed before the fish became insensible, gutting alive can take 25-65 minutes whilst asphyxiation without gutting might last between 55-250 minutes.

‘The process of chilling has been shown to be stressful to fish and may cause violent escape behaviour. It seems likely that putting wild-caught fish onto ice, as they suffocate, will increase the severity of their distress’.

‘Electrical stunning systems have been developed for fish farming,  the fish are killed without taking them out of water and  are stunned immediately, and die without regaining consciousness’. A further study in 2010 found electrical stunning to be the most humane method for edible crabs when compared with common commercial methods such as boiling, chilling, freezing, gassing (CO2) and immersion in salt solutions

To make eating fish more humane it looks as if it would be better for electrical stunning technology to be adapted for use on fishing vessels, and ‘until wild fish are killed humanely they should, at least, not be gutted or immersed in ice-slurry while they are still alive and conscious’.

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