Aquaculture in Asian Countries (Fish Welfare Initiative)

This report contains an executive summary, which has been reproduced exactly as requested.

Summary

In the past few decades, several Asian countries have risen to become the largest aquaculture and, more specifically, finfish producers worldwide. In 2018, almost 90% of all commodified fish¹ came from Asian countries, with China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Bangladesh dominating the global market. Recently, Asian countries have intensified their operations with national and foreign investment, pushing for the sector's growth and boosting the export market. This report will give an overview of aquaculture in Asian countries, which is an essential step towards understanding the value of experimental work towards mitigating inherent fish welfare constraints in these regions. We found that national legislation and certification schemes already established in Asian countries either lack or have insufficient fish welfare requirements. At the same time, traditional farming practices limit farmers' ability to safeguard fish welfare. As production continues to grow and intensify, the environmental, social, and ethical costs of this lack of attention to fish welfare will continue to deepen. There is, however, a growing animal protection movement in Asia that understands the necessity of establishing welfare as the norm while aquaculture is still a young sector. The issues raised here require urgent action and shared responsibility. They also require the consideration of complex interactions between cultural beliefs, the international fish trade, fish consumption, institutional politics, and farmers' awareness of fish welfare.

¹ Here the term fish includes finfish, molluscs, and crustaceans. This interpretation is frequently used by the FAO. This number was taken from FAO, 2020.