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Aquaculture - An investigation on trends and practices in India

FISH AND AQUATIC ANIMALS - OUR NEGLECTED COUSINS

The lives of fishes and other aquatic animals are often not in direct view for us which has  resulted in a collective ignorance about the complexity of their lives. New research undertaken to understand the lives of fishes and other aquatic creatures has resulted in some incredible understanding of the complex nature of these animals. But sadly, this research has been siloed in research circles alone and it hasn’t seen much outreach to the general populace leading to very primitive attitudes towards these animals - such as the animals being not intelligent or that they are not sentient.

We should clarify that there is a spectrum when it comes to intelligence/ cognitive capacities and sentience of different aquatic animals, but it doesn’t mean that they are either unintelligent or non-sentient. Due to a dearth of research on these parameters across all aquatic animals and the extremely high number of species, completion of research for very specific recommendations for welfare of aquatic animals is still afar. This doesn’t mean that we should continue exploiting these animals until such concrete research is in. It is always better to err on the side of caution when one is unclear on the moral nature of an action - hence, in this case, it is better to not kill aquatic animals with a cavalier attitude when there is moral ambiguity (not so much though when it comes to some of the most common aquatic animals killed for food currently).

 

In India, more than 70% of the total production of fish is from inland sources (including aquaculture) and only 28% is from marine environments in 2018-19. India is the third largest fish producer in the world and is also the third largest aquaculture producer as of 2018. Fishes in both conditions suffer excruciatingly when hauled on to the surface where they are killed by asphyxiation in air. This is standard operating procedure for killing fishes currently in almost all parts of the world. Imagine seeing a butcher drowning a chicken or a pig in water to kill the animal. There would be widespread outrage for doing that, although the animal is going to be killed, due to the torturous nature of drowning. But no one bats an eye, heck, people even enjoy when fish are asphyxiated in air (which is similar to drowning a terrestrial animal).

Across the world, anywhere from 73-180 billion fishes are farmed every year and a total of up to 3 trillion fishes are killed each year for food. Combined with the ginormous scale, a lack of knowledge about the aquatic cousins and their low visibility among the general populace has resulted in the huge amount of suffering of these animals being highly neglected. This calls for interventions to change this moral blemish on human society. The enormous scale and high neglectedness of the issue of aquaculture indicates that interventions in this regard are purported to have a high impact.

WHAT WE HAVE DONE SO FAR TO ADDRESS THIS ISSUE?

We had undertaken a nationwide investigation across 241 farms - 161 in freshwater farms and 80 in brackish water farms in 9 of the top 10 states (production-wise). During the investigation, the major parameters that we studied were

  1. Animal welfare parameters
  2. Water quality parameters - Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, Ammonia, pH, Total Ammonia Nitrogen (TAN) and heavy metals
  3. Stocking density
  4. Annual Mortality rate
  5. Method of slaughter
  6. Incidence of diseases
  7. Environmental hazard and Public Health Hazard score - based on subjective estimates of the investigator.

The detailed 104-page report will be available on this page and in our ‘Reports’ page also for everyone to see. You could also use the dashboard in this page to break down the data state-wise and see the infringements and blatantly cruel conditions (in numerical terms) via the dashboard. The whole set of media files - pictures and videos will be made available for public viewing here.

This investigation report will serve as the evidence base on which our policy advocacy and all other interventions will be developed. You could read through our proposed set of approaches in the next section.

We had undertaken a nationwide investigation across 241 farms - 161 in freshwater farms and 80 in brackish water farms in 9 of the top 10 states (production-wise) based on the desk research compiled into a whitepaper on aquaculture in India.

HOW CAN YOU SUPPORT?

You can support the work to reduce the suffering of fish by a variety of methods. Here are a few:

  1. You could say ‘No’ to consuming any more aquatic animals (fishes, crustaceans, cephalopods, etc.). This is the easiest way to create a direct impact on the fishes. If you require assistance with the transition to a plant-based lifestyle, you can find information here by taking up our 21 day challenge.
  2. You could volunteer with local animal activists in your region to spread the word to others. Please contact mail@fiapo.org if you would like to be connected with activists in your city to volunteer your time to raise awareness amongst people.
  3. You could help us with our policy change initiatives by signing on to our petitions that we submit to various authorities to make changes in the conditions of animals. You can find all of our petitions here.
    You could help us by signing our petitions to various authorities to make changes in the conditions in which fishes and other aquatic animals are raised. Please subscribe to the mailing list here through which we will be sending any new petitions that we write to different authorities.
  4. If you have any useful contacts in any of the departments or in the government hierarchy listed above or if you are one amongst them and you would like to help, please contact us through mail@fiapo.org.
  5. You could help fishes and other aquatic animals by donating to high-impact charities like us who work to improve the conditions of fishes and other aquatic animals (and in fact other terrestrial farmed animals) to maximize your impact.
  6. You could bring your skills to work for a high impact non-profit that works for the alleviation of suffering of fishes (and other terrestrial farmed animals).

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQs)

Fish welfare is important for a variety of reasons. The reasons in descending order are as follows:
a) The suffering fishes (and other aquatic animals) is of an extremely high scale compared to terrestrial animals and the welfare of fish is highly neglected.

b) Fish that don’t have good welfare due to bad water quality or due to prophylactic use of antibiotics or high stocking density or any other parameter are more susceptible to diseases. This causes both public health hazards due to consumption of diseased fish or due to the possibility of movement of antibiotics or other dangerous chemicals across different trophic levels via consumption of meat of animals from these low-welfare farms

c ) Due to poor feeding techniques, bad water quality and lack of effluent treatment, (the former two are directly related to welfare of fishes), there is accumulation of too much nutrients in a small region and has the potential to ruin the groundwater. Hence, to alleviate the animal suffering, environmental and public health hazards, it is important that one should care about fish welfare.
Yes, fish can feel pain. We are not attuned to understanding their suffering. Put it this way, they don’t express pain the way we are accustomed to seeing pain being expressed in other terrestrial animals. But the neural pathways depicting pain in fish are similar to the neural pathways in other terrestrial vertebrates. There is a ton of research that shows different species of finfish showing pain perception and alteration of behaviour based on the pain stimulus. As a starter, you can read the following two books to understand the concepts of pain and suffering in fish - Do fish feel pain, by Dr. Victoria Braithwaite and What a Fish Knows: The Inner Lives of Our Underwater Cousins, by Dr. Jonathan Balcombe. The two books are repositories of information related to aquatic animals and are extremely fascinating reading materials for anyone interested in the lives of our underwater cousins.
Yes, fish are intelligent. There is a lot of research that portrays the cognitive capacities of fishes and cephalopods such as octopus. One should understand that the term intelligence is used here in the context of animal intelligence and shouldn’t be considered in the context of intelligence in humans. As a starter, you can read the book titled Other Minds - The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life, by Peter Godfrey Smith. The intelligence of fishes is also detailed in the books mentioned in the question ‘Do fish feel pain?’
Yes. Sentience is defined as the ability of an organism to feel pain and alter their behaviour to avoid the previously experienced negative stimulus, i.e. the ability to learn from previous negative experiences (learning and memory) and avoid such stimuli in the future. At an advanced level, it would also mean making motivated trade offs - i.e. they can endure minor suffering for a greater pleasure. An example of this from Dr. Braithwaite’s book is that trout, which are social fishes, tend to endure mild shock to be near other trout, while they would avoid any region that would shock them when there is no companion trout near the region.
Yes, crustaceans feel pain, but the research is not as conclusive as it is for finfishes. Different crustacean species could have different levels of pain perception potential as per available research. But when it comes to ethical decisions, it is always a generally acceptable rule of thumb to err on the side of caution and act as if they are at least as similar as fishes when it comes to their capability to feel pain. As mentioned for fishes, the starting point to learn more is the book by Dr. Braithwaite mentioned in the question ‘Do fish feel pain?’
Yes, crustaceans are sentient, but the research is not as conclusive as it is for finfishes. A reasonable description of this phenomenon in crustaceans is to say that their sentience is along a spectrum with the mean value slightly lower than it is for the sentience spectrum in finfishes.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration defines aquaculture as ‘the breeding, rearing, and harvesting of fish, shellfish, plants, algae and other organisms in all types of water environments.’
Freshwater aquaculture, Brackish water aquaculture and Mariculture are the three major types of aquaculture.
Based on the inputs given and the stocking density, aquaculture farms in India can be classified as - extensive (low input, low yield, low stocking density), semi-intensive (moderate input, moderate yield, moderate stocking density) and intensive (high input, high yield, high stocking density).
Production of finfishes from aquaculture is higher compared to marine landings and a logical extension of that argument is that the number of fish might also be higher in aquaculture. In addition, with the high growth potential for production in aquaculture and declining marine stocks, this is the sector where suffering in the future would be manifold compared to the current status and hence requires more attention in the here and now to prevent future suffering.
The most commonly farmed fish species are the Indian Major Carps - Catla, Mrigal and Rohu. In our investigation, we also found that magur catfish, red bellied piranha, tilapia and pangasius are grown in states along the east coast.
Whiteleg shrimp is the most commonly farmed crustacean species in India. Crabs are also farmed in some places but not as extensively as whiteleg shrimp.
Very small quantities of Indian Major Carps are exported. They are predominantly consumed domestically. However, as much as 67% of the whiteleg shrimp are exported.
Yes, the production from aquaculture has been higher compared to marine fisheries in India since 2015 and it registered a 14.3% growth from 2017-18.
Since the production is reported in tonnage rather than heads of animals, it is hard to understand how many animals are exactly killed. Also, the number of species that are being caught from marine fisheries, it is hard to calculate the exact amount. The number of Indian Major Carps (IMCs) killed as of 2017-18 is ~4 billion, assuming an average weight of 1.1kg for the IMCs. The production of other freshwater fish is slightly higher than IMCs and assuming similar average weights, that adds ~2 billion finfishes. Production of marine fishes is 5% of other freshwater fish. Due to small fish and other by-catch from marine landings, the number could be anywhere from 1-2 billion. These figures are based on data obtained by FAO’s FishstatJ. The total production reported here is considerably less than that presented in the Department of Fisheries report. If the Department of Fisheries report is considered, the total number of finfishes (from aquaculture and marine sources) could be as high as ~20 billion in 2017-18.
The number of crustaceans could be as high as 12.44 billion, assuming an average weight of each whiteleg shrimp at 50g. The numbers for other crustaceans from marine landings could be as high, if not more. We don’t have enough data on the other crustaceans.
We do not have enough data about production/ landing of cephalopods to estimate the number of cephalopods killed for food. Cephalopods include animals such as octopus, squid, cuttlefish, etc.
There are a variety of things one can do starting from the personal to the legislature. Please refer to the ‘How you can support?’ section of this page to learn more ways to reduce the suffering of fishes, crustaceans and other aquatic animals.
On the surface, it may look as if increasing the welfare of fish is a zero-sum game. It is not. As research shows, increasing the welfare of fishes by providing quality input to the system is one of the best ways to increase the sustainability factor of the farm - both economically and environmentally.
Shrimp farms, especially artificially constructed ones, are notorious for their negative impacts on the environment. You can read about some of the environmental destruction due to brackishwater aquaculture in our whitepaper here. Some of the most common environmental problems are - mangrove forest destruction, contamination of groundwater due to seepage of high concentration of nutrient deposition, run off of effluents into nearby water bodies without treatment, escape of invasive species such as tilapia and magur catfish to other water bodies causing loss of biodiversity, etc.
Yes. Due to the use of antibiotics prophylactically (as a preventive measure, rather than for therapeutic use), there is a significantly high probability of emergence of antibiotic resistance at the farm premises. Due to the accumulation of antibiotics and other chemicals such as pesticides in the muscles and organs of fish, consumption of such animals is another source of increasing the odds of emergence of antibiotic resistance in humans. In our investigation, we also found traces of heavy metals (Lead and Cadmium) in water samples from these farms. The heavy metals could be passed on from one trophic level to the other or it could seep into the groundwater and cause public health hazard for people living nearby.
Some of the basic welfare parameters for fishes and crustaceans are good water quality (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH, dissolved oxygen and total ammonia nitrogen), stocking density, annual mortality rate, method of slaughter, transportation, incidence of disease. You can find the allowable limits and recommended guidelines for many of these parameters in our report here. We do not have recommendations for all parameters since there is a dearth of research around that subject due to the highly neglected nature of welfare science around fishes and other aquatic animals.
There are no laws that directly apply for fish, but laws such as the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (1960) Act, Environment Protection Act (1986) and Wildlife Protection Act (1972) can be indirectly used to protect fish, although to a very small extent compared to the large amount of suffering inflicted on them systematically. This is one of the reasons why it is important to ensure legal protections for fish are brought forth.
Fish Welfare Initiative (FWI) is a new start up organisation that was recently set up in India as a subsidiary of its parent organisation set up in the UK. Humane Society International, India, PETA and Mercy for Animals have showed interest in the investigation and have done some ground work around aquaculture and marine fisheries before. We are not aware of any public campaigns by any other organisation for fish welfare except the one by FWI at this point.
Irrespective of the source, all fish go through similar harvest and transport stress. They languish in pain for several hours in shallow waters of small containers before they’re dead or slaughtered.
Many plant-based sources, especially nuts and seeds can sufficiently fulfill your Omega 3 needs, the easiest options are Chia seeds, Walnuts, Almonds, Flax seeds, Hemp seeds, seaweed and other algae derived supplements .