By Jessica Scott-Reid for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

A growing number of consumers want to know that their meat, dairy and eggs come from animals who were treated well. The trend has become so widespread, in fact, that in the past decade, animal welfare labels have become a familiar sight on grocery store shelves. Now, a growing number of industry and animal welfare groups say fish welfare labels are the next frontier. The once-pervasive "happy cow" marketing campaign of the early-aughts may soon find a new life with the fish industry, as we enter the era of the "happy fish." But just as with labels for meat and dairy, the promise does not always meet the reality. In other words, there's no reason to believe the practice described as humane-washing won't be a problem for fish too.

The Rise of 'Sustainably Raised' Fish

Americans are saying they want to eat a lot more fish these days, citing a mix of health and environmental concerns. Just as many consumers of meat are drawn to cuts marked "sustainable," fish shoppers too are looking for an environmental seal of approval. So much so, in fact, that the "sustainable" seafood market is predicted to reach more than $26 million by 2030.

One popular sustainability certification program for wild caught fish is the blue check from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), one of the oldest fish certifications, used for an estimated 15 percent of the global wild fish catch. The blue check signals to consumers that the fish "comes from healthy and sustainable fish stocks," according to the group, meaning that the fisheries considered the environmental impact and how well the fish populations were managed to avoid overfishing. So while restricting how many fish a company harvests doesn't address how fish die, it at least avoids wiping out entire populations.

Yet the pledge does not always match the practice. According to a 2020 analysis, researchers found that MSC blue check marketing materials often misrepresent the typical environment of the fisheries it certifies. Even though the certifying group "disproportionately features photographs of small-scale fisheries," most of the fish certified by MSC Blue Check are "overwhelmingly from industrial fisheries." And while around half of the group's promotional content "featured small-scale, low-impact fishing methods," in reality, these types of fisheries represent a mere "7 percent of the products it certified."

In reaction to the study, the Marine Stewardship Council "raised concerns" about the authors' connection to a group that had criticized MSC in the past. The journal conducted a post-publication editorial review and found no errors in the study's findings, though it did revise two characterizations of the council in the article and revise the competing interest statement.

Sentient reached out to the Marine Stewardship Council to ask about what, if any, animal welfare standards the blue check promises. In an email response, Jackie Marks, senior communications and public relations manager for MSC replied that the organization is "on a mission to end overfishing," with a focus on environmentally sustainable fishing" and "ensuring that the health of all species and habitats are protected for the future." But, she continues, "humane harvest and animal sentience sit outside the MSC's remit."

Another resource for conscious consumers is the Monterey Bay Seafood Watch Guide. The online tool shows consumers which species and from which regions to "responsibly" purchase, and which ones to avoid, covering wild fisheries and aquaculture operations alike. Here too, the emphasis is on environmental sustainability: "Seafood Watch's recommendations address the environmental impacts of seafood production to help ensure that it is fished and farmed in ways that promote the long-term well-being of wildlife and the environment," according to its website.

Yet in Seafood Watch's extensive standards for aquaculture, and for fisheries, (all 89 and 129 pages, respectively), standards that "promote the long-term well-being of wildlife," neither animal welfare nor humane treatment are mentioned. For now, most fish labels with claims about sustainability primarily cover environmental practices, but a new crop of labels that investigate fish welfare are on the horizon.

The Future of Fish Labels Includes Fish Welfare

Up until a few years ago, most consumers didn't give much thought to fish, how they lived or whether they were capable of suffering. But a growing body of research has uncovered evidence of fish sentience, including that some fish recognize themselves in the mirror, and are quite capable of feeling pain.

As the public learns more about the inner lives of all sorts of animals, including fish, some consumers are willing to pay more for products that assure them the fish was treated well. Fish and seafood companies are taking notice of this, along with some labeling bodies, including the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, which has called animal welfare "a key factor in defining 'responsible production."

In 2022, ASC published its Fish Health and Welfare Criterion draft, where the group called for certain welfare considerations to be included, including "anesthesia of fish during handling operations that can inflict pain or injury if fish are moving," and "maximum time fish can be out of water," that "shall be signed off by a veterinarian."

Much like most meat industry labels, the group leaves oversight mainly to farmers. ASC spokesperson Maria Filipa Castanheira tells Sentient that the group's "work on Fish Health and Welfare consists of a set of indicators that allows farmers to continuously monitor and evaluate their farming systems and the status of fish species." These are "real daily actions that take into account some key indicators defined as Operational Welfare Indicators (OWI): water quality, morphology, behavior and mortality," she adds.

Heather Browning, PhD, a researcher and lecturer on animal welfare at the University of Southampton, raised concerns about the measures. Browning, telling industry publication The Fish Site that these measures mostly focus more on animal health than well-being.

Other measures that could address animal well-being specifically include preventing overcrowding - which is common and can lead to stress - and avoiding sensory deprivation caused by a lack of natural stimuli. Mishandling during capture or transport can also cause fish to suffer, and slaughter methods for farmed fish, also often considered by animal protection advocates to be inhumane, are overlooked by many labeling schemes.

Fish Welfare for Wild and Farmed Fish

In the U.S., "wild caught" labeled fish do tend to experience some welfare benefits as compared to farmed fish, at least during their lives.

According to Lekelia Jenkins, PhD, associate professor of sustainability at Arizona State University, who specializes in solutions for sustainable fisheries, these animals "grow up in their natural environments, are allowed to engage in the ecosystem and provide their ecological function in their natural environment." This, she adds, "is a healthy thing for the environment and the fish up to the point of capture." Compare this to many fish raised in industrial aquaculture operations, where overcrowding and living in tanks can cause stress and suffering.

That all takes a drastic turn for the worse, however, when fish are caught. According to a 2021 report by Eurogroup for Animals, fish can die in any number of painful ways, including "chased to exhaustion," crushed or asphyxiated. Numerous other fish called bycatch are also caught up in nets and killed in the process, often in the same painful manner.

Is a Better Death for Fish Even Possible?

While regulating "humane slaughter" is notoriously difficult, a number of national welfare organizations are trying, including Australia's RSPCA, Friends of the Sea, RSPCA Assured and Best Aquaculture Practices, by making stunning before slaughter mandatory. Advocacy group Compassion in World Farming created a table that lists the standards - and lack thereof - for a variety of fish labeling schemes, including whether the way the fish is slaughtered is humane and whether stunning prior to killing is mandatory.

CIWF tells Sentient that for the group "humane slaughter" is codified as "slaughter without suffering, which can take one of those three forms: death is instantaneous; stunning is instantaneous and death intervenes before consciousness returns; death is more gradual but is non-aversive." It adds that "Instantaneous is interpreted by the EU as taking less than a second."

Included on CIWF's list is the Global Animal Partnership (GAP), which also requires stunning before slaughter, but unlike the others, also requires larger living conditions, minimized stocking densities and enrichment for farmed salmon. However, a representative from GAP tells Sentient that, for now, there are no GAP-certified salmon operations.

Still, there are other efforts, some more ambitious than others. One, the Ike Jime slaughtering method, aims to fully kill the fish in seconds, while the other, cell cultivated fish, requires no slaughter at all.


Jessica Scott-Reid wrote this article for Sentient.


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By Jessica Scott-Reid for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Nebraska News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration

Livestock auctions exist all across North America. They serve as a stop between the farms where animals are born, and the farms where they will be "fattened" or "finished;" the stop between life and death, where animals are sold to be slaughtered. In these fast-paced spaces, animals are pushed through like products - prodded, chased, tossed and dragged - by people paid to get the job done, quickly.

Between late 2022 and early 2024, footage was gathered from over a dozen of these auctions, from across 10 U.S. states by Pete Paxton (Sentient has agreed to use an alias), an undercover investigator with the group Strategies for Ethical and Environmental Development, or SEED.

For a recent story for Vox Media, I was tasked with watching this footage, which shows terrified, confused and exhausted animals being handled harshly, or outright abused. Some animals are shown with injuries, while others have already died at auction.

The footage also shows workers with seemingly no regard for the animals' suffering. Some lash out at the animals in frustration, while others laugh at animals in pain.

"Hundreds or even thousands of animals are sold at auctions within hours," Paxton writes on SEED's website, "and workers must keep up the pace to move scared, exhausted, sick and injured animals in and out of pens. Workers experience dehydration, hunger and exhaustion as a result, which often leads to impatience and subsequent abuse."

Writing the Vox story was difficult. The 20-minute compilation of secretly filmed clips initially took me a week to get through; I could only watch for a few minutes at a time before the discomfort became unbearable. But then, over time, something interesting happened: watching the footage became easier for me. And Paxton understands, firsthand, why.

Desensitization and Animal Abuse

Working on the story over a few months, I had to go back to the footage over and over again. As I did, the images and sounds that had once made me gasp and cover my eyes became less horrific. Over time, they even became bearable. I had become desensitized to the animals' pain and fear, a phenomenon common among those who work in animal farming spaces like auctions.

Dr. Philip Tedeschi, a clinical professor at the University of Denver, and an expert in the human-animal connection, explains that for people working in animal farming spaces, empathy can become incompatible with the job, "inefficient" and "inconvenient."

"One of the things we know about studying empathy is that the presence of empathy can be an inhibitor to engaging in the behavior itself," he explains. "If you're required to engage in forcing animals through a meat processing plant, or expected to stick to a very strict timeline," like at auctions or on an assembly line, "you can't afford to be gentle or kind or humane. Then one of the things that's inefficient or incompatible is to have empathy for those individual animals." Emotionally distancing from animals can aid these workers in getting through the work day.

Paxton admits that the work he does as an undercover investigator is "pretty fucking difficult."

"I've had ex-military and ex-law enforcement reach out to me, and they're like, 'I don't know how you do that, because, man, I would lose my shit.'" But Paxton knows he's there to complete an important task, and that allows him to compartmentalize his feelings. "I tell investigators when I train them, 'It's way easier than you think to get used to the abuse, because when you see it there's two things going on in your head: one is, 'Oh, shit, an animal is being abused,' and then the other thing in your head is, 'I have to document that and not get caught.'"

For Paxton, overriding his concerns about the animal abuse he witnesses is an important part of his job as an investigator. For the people who work at animal auctions, Paxton believes desensitization operates much the same way. Abuse of animals at auctions becomes normalized, Paxton reports, as workers are pressured by management to move animals in and out - fast.

The harsh environment forces workers - ranging from inexperienced teens to long-time workers - to handle animals roughly to keep up with the demanding work. They also learn abusive behaviors from each other.

The Mental Health Impact of Working in Animal Agriculture

As part of his investigation, Paxton kept video footage and written records of certain people he met while working at the auctions. On SEED's website, he describes some of these workers as "good people" who "do bad things."

For example, in one small rural town, Paxton met 17-year-old "Audrey." Exhausted and under pressure, she mimicked abusive actions she witnessed from co-workers, reflecting learned behaviors. "As the workday dragged on, her frustrations led her to drag baby lambs and goats by their legs in fits of anger, mirroring the abusive actions she saw around her," Paxton writes. He also recalls "Stewart," a hardworking 20-year-old, dragging goats and jabbing calves with his keys, seeing cruelty as necessary for the job, "a means to an end."

Similar working conditions have also been documented in slaughterhouses, where both workers and animals are known to suffer. Slaughterhouse workers have for decades been documented engaging in extreme cruelty beyond basic animal handling.

For example, a 2018 investigation by Animal Aid uncovered UK slaughterhouse workers beating cows with pipes, while encouraging others to join in. In 2022, Animal Equality documented workers in Brazil kicking, beating and dragging cows by ropes, and twisting their tails to force movement.

Research has shown that the slaughterhouse environment, and the nature of slaughterhouse work itself, can and does have notable psychological impacts on workers. For example, slaughterhouse workers are four times more likely to be clinically depressed than the general public, according to a 2015 study. Higher rates of anxiety, psychosis and serious psychological distress are also found among those working in slaughterhouses, compared to the population at large.

As Dr. Kendra Coulter, now coordinator of Huron University's Animal Ethics and Sustainability Leadership program, told Sentient in 2020: in slaughterhouses, both workers and animals are commodified, "animals literally so." But both are ultimately seen as disposable.

Cultural Impact on Animal Treatment

Upbringing and culture can also play a key role in one's ability to turn off empathy for farm animals. As Tedeschi explained to Sentient on the topic of rodeos, if a person is brought up since childhood to believe that something is "culturally defined as a deserving activity," it becomes normalized.

We see this in rodeo activities geared specifically toward children, such as "pig scrambles" and "mutton busting," where children will ride sheep or other animals, "or engage in wrestling an animal or controlling them in some form," Tedeschi says, "And then getting a lot of attention for that. This is early shaping of those behaviors." Organizations like 4H and Future Farmers of America similarly serve to socialize children to emotionally distance themselves from the animals they are tasked to care for, before selling them to be slaughtered.

Paxton notes that the people he met while working at livestock auctions come from this same wider community. "They're the same people," he says. "They fucking love rodeos." This also includes the police and inspectors on site. "If you're a cop and you're in a rural area, you probably have cows, you've probably kicked them," he says. "Your parents have kicked them, and you're not going to bring charges against a fucking kid or elderly person who does the same thing."

"It's cowboy culture," Renee King-Sonnen, a former cattle rancher turned animal sanctuary operator, told Vox. Cowboy culture involves the normalization of inhumane treatment of animals at auctions, she adds. The drive to belong to that culture is what drives that shared behavior.

"People that are part of this community or this culture feel a solidarity with each other," explains Dr. Rebekah Humphreys, a senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Wales, and an expert in animal ethics. In the case of spaces where animals are farmed, slaughtered, tested on, etc., "the mistreatment of animals," she says, is "reinscribed and perpetuated through cultures. And then anyone that is outside of that norm is criticized as being overly sentimental or anthropomorphic."

Paxton believes that most people working at auctions don't believe they're doing anything wrong when they mistreat animals. "For many of them, it is the right thing, pulling a screaming goat by the ear," he says. "This animal just needs to move, [and] everyone's always done it that way. Does that make me an asshole?" he asks, putting himself in the position of the workers. "Or wouldn't I really be an asshole if I said, 'Everyone stop the entire auction?' If I had to assuage this animal's feelings and recognize this animal as an individual?"

The Bottom Line

Ultimately, both Tedeschi and Humphreys agree that the commodification of farm animals as property, legally and morally, allows places like animal auctions to exist, and for farm animals to be othered so severely. "The industrialization and commodification of [farm animals] has turned them into objects to the extent that we are really quite distanced from them," says Humphreys.

And that distance, Tedeschi believes, prohibits humans from thinking of these animals with more ethical consideration. "We're not likely to see people do a deeper kind of moral investigation into how we interact with other animals, as long as we view them as having the same legal position as the toaster on our counter."

For people like Paxton and me, who exist outside that cowboy culture but are tasked with investigating it, the ability to compartmentalize - to distance ourselves from the natural empathy we feel for animals, in order to get the job done - also reveals just how easily desensitization can happen.

This is in part what allows Paxton to see those who abuse animals at auctions as otherwise good people. "I'm not really scared of these people," he says. "I didn't find them to be violent or terrifying people. They're fucking nice people," he says. As long as you're not a cow.


Jessica Scott-Reid wrote this article for Sentient.


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Animal rights organizers are regrouping after mixed results at the ballot box in November.

A measure targeting factory farms passed in Berkeley but failed in Sonoma County. Measure J, to ban concentrated animal-feeding operations, only got 15% of the vote and Ordinance 309 to ban slaughterhouses failed in Denver.

Cassie King, an organizer with the Coalition to End Factory Farming, helped raise $280,000 to promote the ban in Sonoma County, even as opponents raised $2.2 million.

"We learned that money and the ability to lie during political campaigns is a very powerful combination of factors to be up against," King asserted. "I was shocked by the amount of misinformation that came out from the No on J campaign, just statistics that had no basis in reality."

Measure DD in Berkeley passed but is mostly symbolic since the only existing concentrated animal feeding operation, a horse racing operation called Golden Gate Fields, closed last June.

King stressed win or lose, the measures went a long way toward raising public awareness of the pollution and animal welfare issues at large factory farms.

"It's a test case, and whether it wins or loses, it's generating tens of thousands of conversations in the county and many more beyond," King contended. "And making the end of factory farming visible for a lot of people who haven't realized that it's something we can achieve in our lifetimes."

The "No on J" campaign and opponents of the Denver slaughterhouse ordinance argued the bans would have hurt jobs and tax revenue.

This story is based on original reporting by Seth Millstein for Sentient.


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Advocates said a lack of animal welfare laws is leading to pain and suffering on American factory farms.

Close to 99% of livestock is now raised in industrial-type facilities, where animal welfare groups said efficiency and profitability take precedence over animals' well-being.

Delcianna Winders, associate professor of law and director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School, said while more than a dozen states have banned what are deemed torture-like confinement for animals, there is no federal law protecting them from abuse.

"If most people were aware that the animal they're sitting down to eat couldn't move throughout their entire life, just to give one example, I don't think they would want to support that," Winders contended.

Winders pointed out the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act requires animals be knocked unconscious before they are killed but corporations running factory farms are lobbying for the law to be weakened in order to speed up meat production.

So-called "ag-gag" laws in several states criminally penalize those who seek to expose animal suffering on farms, in slaughterhouses and at animal auctions. Winders added she is concerned a second Trump Administration could allow factory farm owners to further erode any remaining health and safety standards.

"They've been able to carve themselves out from complying with the laws that everybody else has to comply with," Winders asserted. "That certainly includes cruelty-to-animals laws. It also includes pollution laws, worker-safety laws, the whole gamut."

Winders advised people concerned with animal welfare to try more plant-based alternatives to meat and learn more about how their food is raised. She stressed as consumers increasingly turn to "organic" and "free-range" meat options, corporations are working to lower the standards for what those labels mean and the conditions under which those animals can be raised.

This story is based on original reporting by Seth Millstein for Sentient.


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