Fish farming has been getting away with a low profile when it comes to animal rights for too long. The debate about whether it’s OK to eat animals that “can’t feel pain,” is one reason fish don’t get a lot of attention. The right of fish to live free in their natural habitats has thus far been hijacked by the excuse that has been used about other sentient beings, that fish are automatons humans should be allowed to kill and torture. There is also the false belief that fish farming is somehow better for the environment than wild fishing. Both of these arguments for fish farming have been widely refuted.

The scale of industrial fish farming has ramped up in recent decades to the point where fish farms resemble the industrial killing fields of large scale chicken farming and other industrial meat farming. The conditions fish suffer in fish farms are miserable and painful. Fish farms are often overcrowded and fish suffer from diseases. Poor water quality compromises fishes’ immune systems, chemicals used to treat fish infestations sicken fish, and over-crowded fish are vulnerable to aggression from other fish. Just as with industrially farmed chickens, fish are bred to grow faster and bigger leading to health problems like abnormal heart shape and cataracts.

Also, increasingly, fish are fed on the bodies of other wild caught fish. A recent report found that one fifth of all wild caught fish are fed to farmed fish. Human fish production is a “fish eat fish” world, and there is no mercy for the fish whether they are caught in the wild or on farms. Fish in the wild suffer hours of suffocation on the decks of fishing trawlers before they die, while fish in farms suffer lives of pain and discomfort and the inability to perform the natural behaviors they would in the wild.

Also, it’s been definitively proved that fish do have feelings and feel pain. Fish have nociceptors which detect and respond to threatening and damaging stimuli. They have also been shown to have brain activity in response to events that are potentially painful – what we would call fear. When fish are in pain they are distracted, and less able to function. They even rub themselves against surfaces to alleviate the pain, as humans would do.

The more different the animal, the less easy it is for humans to relate to them. This has been used to cover up the reality that animals with different systems are still autonomous beings who experience their world as dynamically as we do and can suffer or thrive. Cruelty to fish should no longer be allowed to hide behind the fact that they are different from us. Fish are less well understood beings that humans have decided to enslave and exploit. Fish farms are showing us the scale of our exploitation and cruelty, and why fish need to be liberated from human exploitation and enslavement.

Please visit FishFeel.org to learn more about advocating for fish: https://fishfeel.org/

Read More about fish farming: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22301931/fish-animal-welfare-plant-based