Certifier Campaign

Aquatic Life Institute’s Certifier Campaign’s main objective is to improve and to hold seafood certifier standards accountable: fish products labeled as “sustainable” or “responsible” must include the most robust animal welfare considerations. We engage seafood certifiers around the world to ensure the highest welfare standards for aquatic animals. Our moonshot goal is to see the entire global seafood market follow welfare guidelines by 2030. Consumers often turn to seafood labeling schemes for guidance to purchase sustainable seafood products, assuming that they animal welfare is taken into consideration. However, even the largest seafood certification schemes in the world lack considerations for animal welfare.

The concept of what constitutes a “high welfare seafood product” is still currently largely undefined worldwide - not by the public, industry, animal welfare organizations, nor most governments. For farmed animals on land, there are many different labeling schemes and standards, such as “cage free” and “humanely raised.” Even though this is a major step in the right direction for animal welfare, it has also contributed to a certain level of confusion for consumers in what they mean exactly. Disjointed labeling regimes are bad for both the animals and for consumers who are trying to be responsible. 

We want to see animal welfare as an integral component of the concept of “sustainability” in certification schemes, because it is. Healthy aquatic animals in both physical and psychological terms translate to less stress and disease, less antibiotic use, and less deaths before they even reach the market, helping to preserve our fish populations.

As seafood certifying bodies are beginning to slowly add welfare standards into their labeling programs, we have the unique opportunity to help define what a high welfare seafood product, including humanely-raised and -slaughtered, actually is. This is our chance to ensure that certifiers and labelling regimes include meaningful, high standards from the get-go. Specifically, in terms of aquaculture, we want “humanely-raised” standards to include more than just stunning before slaughter, but also to consider the welfare conditions all the way from birth to death during each life stage. Furthermore, we want high welfare standards for aquatic animals not directly used for human consumption as well, such as cleaner fish, feeder animals and broodstock. As for wild-caught aquatic animals, we want to see an end to destructive fishing practices that cause bycatch, Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, and we want to minimize the suffering of aquatic animals during the time of capture, retrieval, onboard handling, transport, and stunning & slaughter.

In 2023, ALI launched the second edition of a welfare-based aquaculture certification benchmark tool that analyzes welfare requirements within the primary farming standards of 7 global seafood certification schemes. The assessment areas include water quality, stocking density and space requirements, environmental enrichment, feed composition, stunning and slaughter, neglected species prohibitions, and additional considerations.