Animal Welfare
February 8th, 2009
We advocate the humane treatment of animals at all times and we support an animal welfare agenda. Animal welfare is the viewpoint that animals, especially those under human care, should not suffer unnecessarily, including where the animals are used for food, work, companionship, or research. This position focuses on the morality of human action (or inaction), as opposed to making deeper philosophical claims about the status of animals, as is the case for an animal rights viewpoint. For this reason animal welfare organizations may use the word humane in their title or position statements.
Animal welfare is of vital concern to fish farmers because inappropriate animal handling induces stress that can then lead to injury, disease, and substandard growth performance. Aquatic producers recognize that controlling animal stress is essential to economic success and each of them must develop procedures that uniformly promote the animal health for reasons of efficiency, product appearance, and market appeal.
Because we practice animal husbandry to supply the consumer with animal food products, we do not subscribe to an animal rights agenda that prohibits the use of animal products for human consumption. We view the production of animals for food as a normal part of food production for the consumer who has the freedom to select animal food sources and who prefers those produced under humane conditions prescribed by our animal welfare policy.
