Major Victory: Billions of Lives Improved

At the end of 2020, we received tremendous news for Aquatic Life Institute, Aquatic Animal Alliance, and the trillions of individuals on whose behalf we work: Product certifier GLOBALG.A.P., which certifies an estimated two billion aquatic animals each year, made significant welfare updates to their standards in response to our June feedback. This means approximately two billion aquatic animals each year will live improved lives. It is also the first major victory in our coordinated global advocacy effort.

Estimated Impact: 2 Billion Animals Each Year

For years, there was a widespread understanding among advocates that aquatic animal welfare was a neglected issue and the suffering was at mammoth scale, but a general sense of hesitancy to begin work on such a complex and large problem, especially while terrestrial farmed animal work was very much still underway.

Then, between 2017 and 2020, research and grantmaking foundation Open Philanthropy Project awarded a number of grants to product certification schemes to develop aquatic animal standards. For the first time, product certifiers were preparing to present the public with a standard for “higher-welfare” aquatic animal products and animal nonprofits risked not having a seat at the table.

The work of these certifiers became all the more important because of a unique facet of the aquaculture industry: 35% of aquatic animal products worldwide are either certified, rated for their level of sustainability, or in an improvement program. This means that the work of certifiers has come to have a tremendous impact on aquaculture as a whole, a characteristic not shared by the terrestrial animal product market.

As philanthropist William Bench watched this unfold, he became concerned about two potential outcomes:

1. Animal advocates would fail to have a voice in certifiers’ standards and crucial animal welfare considerations would go unaddressed, or

2. Animal advocates would engage in this process, but a failure to coordinate would result in contradictory asks and potentially even a “race to the bottom.”

The risk was setting the bar low, which would shape the trajectory of aquatic welfare work for years or even decades to come. On the other hand, if the bar could be set high from the start, it would be far easier to then use the benchmark set to raise the standards of other certifiers, governments, and corporations, who could in turn simply follow a certifier’s standards, rather than be obligated to respond to advocacy groups’ laundry list of potentially conflicting considerations.

In 2019, William founded the Aquatic Life Institute (ALI) with the express goal of improving aquatic lives by creating a hub that coordinates and expedites aquatic welfare work. The idea was simple: ALI would fund research to fill critical holes in our understanding of aquatic welfare, build coalition groups that coalesce around shared asks, coordinate international advocacy, and lay the foundation for broader public support through education. ALI’s first target became these certification schemes.

“I saw a time-sensitive opportunity that could affect trillions of lives and founded The Aquatic Life Institute to seize that opportunity. Today’s early victory shows our strategy is already having an outsized impact.”

William Bench, ALI Founder & President

In June 2020, we established what would become the Aquatic Animal Alliance. ALI organized the first Alliance call between animal nonprofits Animal Equality, Compassion in World Farming, Dyrevernalliansen, Fish Welfare Initiative, The Humane League, and Mercy for Animals in response to certifier GLOBALG.A.P.’s public consultation period for its drafted Aquaculture Standards v0.6-1. ALI’s aim was to make Alliance efforts as straightforward, efficient, and effective as possible. But Alliance members surpassed expectations, working together smoothly and coalescing quickly around a shared feedback submission. Aquatic Animal Alliance was thus born.

Between June 2020 and February 2021, Aquatic Animal Alliance grew in membership to more than twenty nonprofits across six continents, joined forces with members of sister alliance Coalition for Aquatic Conservation, and submitted feedback to five certifiers and four regulatory bodies. In December 2020, we received word that the first target of our work, GLOBALG.A.P., was so receptive and impressed by our joint voice, they then implemented major revisions to their standards in response.

Summary of Positive Changes from v0.6-1 to v0.6-2

GLOBALG.A.P. implemented several important revisions and additions in v0.6-2 that represent significant and commendable improvements in its Control Points and Compliance Criteria for its Aquaculture Standards. We would like to acknowledge this effort and GLOBALG.A.P.’s willingness to engage in the public consultation process and work with NGOs to ensure better welfare for aquatic animals.

We share these revisions and additions below, with GLOBALG.A.P.’s updated language italicized:

1. Replacement of the term “farmed seafood” with “farmed aquatic species” throughout the entirety of the document, which better reflects the disparate moral and practical considerations between aquatic plants (i.e. macro-algae) and aquatic animals (i.e. finfishes, crustaceans, and mollusks).

2. Creation of an entire new criteria, 20.2.16., focused on environmental enrichment and its necessity to enhance psychological and behavioral welfare. ALI is particularly excited by the addition of 20.2.16. because environmental enrichment is a key pillar of our welfare work. Farmed aquatic animals are conventionally confined to barren enclosures that are void of enrichment and unable to meet their psychological needs. In some cases, they can spend over a decade in these conditions, which some have compared to the psychological deprivation of humans in solitary confinement.

   • Does the farmer consider enhancing of the rearing conditions to improve performance and animal welfare of the farmed aquatic species?

   • Based on the increased understanding of the husbandry of aquatic species, consideration shall be given to enhancing physiological and behavioural needs E.g. environmental enrichments.

3. Creation of an entire new criteria, 4.2.4., designated a “major must” and focused on staff receiving training in animal welfare and handling techniques.

   • Do all staff responsible for farming operations have appropriate training in aquatic species welfare and handling techniques?

   • Staff shall be able to demonstrate competence at interview. Training records and certificates, for each member of staff with allocated functions or jobs shall be assessed.  Workers need to be able to demonstrate appropriate handling techniques and identify indicators of poor welfare, including but not limited to: diseases, parasites, physical damage, behavioral abnormalities, morphological abnormalities, altered production parameters. As a minimum, training shall take place with 5 years frequency. 

4. Conversion of multiple welfare criteria from “minor must” to “major must” designation.

5. A requirement that larvae originate from shrimp females without eyestalk ablation, beginning in September 2023. It is common practice in the shrimp industry to remove the eyestalks of parent females, rendering them blind. This is inaccurately believed to increase fertility, whereas research shows it instead increases disease and mortality. In addition to finfishes, GLOBALG.A.P. also has a share of the global shrimp market, which by our estimates represents another 200-400 billion individuals killed annually. 

6. A requirement for records of mortalities to include cause of mortalities and diseases.

7. A requirement for the registration system to include not just disease occurrences (and their diagnosis, treatment, and mortalities), but also results of animal health and welfare observations.

8. A requirement for an even distribution of feed so as to avoid competition and aggression.

9. A requirement that crowding, time out of the water, grading, transport, and fasting are justified by an animal health professional.

10. A requirement for “humane methods” of predator killing.

“For the first time, GLOBALG.A.P. will ask farmers to consider not just the physiological condition of the animals they rear, but also the animals’ behavioral needs. This will revolutionize the lives of billions of farmed aquatic animals and brings us one step closer to a world where aquatic animals are recognized for what they are: sentient.”

Christine Xu, Strategic Director, Aquatic Life Institute

While we celebrate this huge victory, our work is far from complete. On January 31, 2021, Aquatic Animal Alliance submitted our second round of feedback to GLOBALG.A.P. on Aquaculture Standards Draft v0.6-2 and its Compound Feed Manufacturing standard. In our next blog post, we will detail the major changes we are pushing for in this feedback and how they draw from Aquatic Animal Alliance’s Key Aquatic Animal Welfare Recommendations for Aquaculture, our first-of-its-kind guide to welfare in aquaculture released this December.

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