New welfare standard pledges to curtail fish and crustacean cruelties in seafood supply chains

The welfare of fish and other seafood species has historically been absent from corporate animal welfare policies, but that could soon start to shift following a new Model Seafood Welfare Standard (MSWS) for food companies.

The MSWS — now released online at SeafoodWelfare.org — was developed in cooperation with eight leading animal protection NGOs working on seafood welfare in North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America. 

It’s hailed as “a common-sense policy” for sustainable sourcing and complements existing corporate policies on other animal welfare issues pertinent to the food industry, such as cage-free eggs, crate-free pork, and Better Chicken Commitment poultry.

The MSWS addresses critical welfare issues for farmed and wild-caught fish. For aquaculture, it covers water quality and disease management, environments, mutilations, and humane stunning. For wild-catch producers, it focuses on eradicating harmful catch methods, reducing bycatch, and humane slaughter.

The idea is for food firms to use it as a roadmap to improve seafood sourcing.

Sustainable seafood sourcing 

Thousands of suppliers that already meet all or some of the Model Seafood Welfare Standard’s parameters are listed on the directory. Users can gain valuable insights from the Standard’s text. Users can also sort by species, country, and production method.

Seafood represents the largest number of animals used for food globally. Trillions of aquatic animals are consumed annually, including 133 billion farmed fish, 630 billion farmed shrimp, and up to 2 trillion wild-caught finfish, according to Lever Foundation, a US-based NGO that has helped a range of food companies develop policies in this area.

While the number of food companies adopting enhanced animal welfare policies needs to increase, an increasing number of big players, such as Espresso House, Costco, JDE Peets, are raising the bar in this regard. The companies will implement the parameters of the MSWS in their supply chains.

“Many food companies have developed animal welfare policies aimed at removing the worst cruelties from their supply chain for animal protein ingredients they source. For example, there are thousands of food companies with policies that require sourcing only eggs from cage-free hens, pork from producers that avoid the use of gestation crates, or chicken produced according to the criteria of the Better Chicken Commitment standard,” Astrid Duque, program manager at Lever Foundation, tells Food Ingredients First.

 “But to date, there has been no basic, common-sense animal welfare policy that food companies could look to as a practical, achievable model for eliminating the worst cruelties from their seafood supply chain. The MSWS aims to fill that gap.”

“The MSWS is indeed intended to complement commitments like cage-free eggs or the Better Chicken Commitment by extending similar common-sense basic animal welfare protections to fish and crustaceans in food company supply chains.” 

“Seafood represents the largest group of animals raised and killed for food production, but historically, it has been overlooked in animal welfare sourcing policies. Thankfully, that is now starting to change with an increasing number of food companies putting meaningful seafood welfare policies in place as well.” 

“With the Model Seafood Welfare Standard, companies that have already acted on issues like cage-free eggs and Better Chicken Commitment poultry now have a clear, practical framework to address welfare in seafood, making their animal welfare sourcing policies more consistent and credible.” 

Adopting the new Model Seafood Welfare Standard offers food companies protection from reputational damage, improves the seafood supply chain and gives consumers what they want.

Protecting industry reputation

The MSWS comes amid growing consumer concern for these animals, and different research papers show that fish and crustaceans can feel pain and stress just like pigs, chickens, and other animals raised for food.

Companies that adhere to the Standard are boosting their reputation as well as giving consumers what they want.

“The most immediate benefit is reputational, as adopting the MSWS, or an equivalently strong seafood welfare policy, shows that a company is proactive on an issue that is gaining increased global scrutiny from those concerned about animal welfare.”

She says that food companies with sourcing policies that talk about prioritizing animal welfare but do not have meaningful welfare standards for seafood are leaving themselves open for public and customer criticism, both from the incredible cruelties that can occur in the seafood sector and also from the “inconsistent application” of their own stated values.

“It’s also worth noting that from an environmental sustainability perspective, many of the welfare improvements covered in the Standard also have major environmental benefits. For example, aquaculture producers that improve water quality have been shown to lower CO₂ emissions by 20%, while those that can significantly reduce disease and mortality have been able to cut emissions by CO₂ emissions by 35%.” 

“Each of these improvements is a key piece of the MSWS. So adopting the Standard can not only help companies protect their brand from an animal welfare perspective, it can also help them deliver against their existing environmental sustainability and carbon reduction goals, all with essentially no impact, or a vanishingly trivial impact, on cost, he continues.

Hitting key animal welfare parameters globally

One of the challenges in designing this roadmap was to align NGO perspectives from multiple continents into a single global standard.

Duque explains that seafood is a complex issue given the huge number of species involved and the wide range of conditions under which they are raised or captured. Different NGOs and consultancies have different views on the most important welfare challenges and the best ways to address them. 

“The MSWS is simply a baseline set of policy improvements that all of the animal protection NGOs that work on seafood welfare and that provided input into the Standard’s wording agreed would represent an important positive step forward in addressing some of the key seafood welfare problems.” 

The Model Seafood Welfare Standard helps companies strengthen their seafood supply chains by setting clear expectations for suppliers around avoiding the worst industrial farming and aquaculture practices, reducing reputational risk among consumers and members of the general public concerned with the well-being of animals,” continues Duque. 

“Many suppliers that meet the standards of the MSWS are also certified by a third-party certifier with meaningful animal welfare standards, such as the Aquaculture Stewardship Council or Naturland, among others. Buying from suppliers certified by these schemes provides a strong extra layer of transparency and risk reduction to food company buyers.” 

How does the directory work?

The supplier directory at SeafoodWelfare.org gives procurement teams instant access to a directory of thousands of suppliers worldwide who already meet or are on track to meet all (or some) of the Model Seafood Welfare Standard’s parameters. A seafood procurement team manager can quickly look up if their current supplier likely offers product lines that meet the MSWS’s criteria, notes Duque. 

“They can also instantly see lists of suppliers in any given seafood category (for example, shrimp or sea bass) that already meet the Standard. The directory should make it clear to procurement and sustainability teams just how easy it is to add the MSWS to their existing animal welfare sourcing policy and to source against it.”