Pre-Slaughter Stunning Phase 2 - Foundational Research Reports and Next Steps (Fish Welfare Initiative)
As part of the first phase of our project to investigate and possibly implement pre-slaughter stunning in India, we commissioned three research reports to assess general viability. These reports have now been finished, and we are linking to them below.
Based on the findings from these reports, we are proceeding with the project through two parallel tracks:
- Trialing chill killing.
- Investigating manual percussive stunning and killing methods.
Update July 31, 2025: Since the publication of this post, we’ve reconsidered our approach to manual percussive stunning and have ultimately decided not to continue pursuing it right now. Our decision stems from the limited potential for meaningful welfare improvements within India’s current aquaculture context, specifically:
- Mass Harvest Limitations: Most farmed fishes in India are killed through mass asphyxiation, making it implausible that farmers, workers, or traders could be incentivized to manually stun thousands of fishes individually.
- Limited Welfare Improvement in Wet Markets: For fishes sold alive in wet markets, manual percussive stunning would only spare approximately 30 seconds of intense suffering per animal, according to our preliminary research. Given the challenges related to scalability and the difficulty of consistently effective stunning practices, this modest reduction in per-fish suffering, in our view, does not justify the resource cost compared to other projects we could undertake.
This decision does not affect our ongoing plans regarding chill killing, which we continue to pursue actively.
We remain hopeful that manual percussive stunning will eventually become a more widespread and effective practice in India’s fish markets. However, the current conditions suggest that today is not yet the right moment for this approach.