Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation Briefing Document: The Legal Protection of Farmed Fish vs Terrestrial Farmed Animals:
What are the anomalies and how can they be addressed?

Lumpfish and wrasse species are remarkable animals with unique personalities and the ability for tool use. They even show some evidence of self-awareness. Relying on their
natural (yet, opportunistic) ‘cleaning’ behaviour, the aquaculture industry uses millions of them (about 15 million produced in Scotland in 2020) to eat sea lice from farmed salmon. The industry refers to them as ‘cleaner fish’, hiding their rights as individual sentient beings.

Feather pecking and cannibalism constitute the greatest economic and welfare pressures to poultry production today. The current response to this ongoing issue is beak trimming.

76% of people in the UK believe the welfare of fish should be safeguarded to the same extent as other farmed animals

This report demonstrates how large-scale industrial animal agriculture cannot remain at the current levels in the UK and still meet environmental targets.

This brief by GeneWatch UK highlights many questions regarding the mechanistic underpinnings of DNA repair pathways in the genome editing process, and how this may impact the safety and efficacy of genome-edited organisms.

Fish farming is the fastest growing food sector in the world, and the UK faces a unique time-sensitive opportunity to shape that growth.

Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs, post implementation review of regulations on the welfare of animals at the time of killing.

This report concludes that there is sufficiently strong evidence to conclude that both crustaceans and cephalopods are sentient.

“There is as much evidence that fish feel pain and suffer as there is for birds and mammals”

– Victoria Braithwaite, Author of “Do Fish Feel Pain?”

Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation’s submission to Defra on why we oppose GMOs.

The UK was one of the first countries to enact animal welfare legislation, however, fish have typically been left out of this progress.

We recommend a complete ban on live animal exports. This would ensure they are slaughtered & raised according to UK’s welfare standards.

The review shows by bringing economics and ecology together, we can help save the natural world at what may be the last minute.

Use of and interest in alternative systems to farrowing crates has been growing over the last decade, which is explored in this report.

As trends in ethical consumerism continue to rise, information about production and slaughter methods becomes increasingly necessary.

FAWC have identified a number of welfare impacts which animals may experience when they are transported, detailed in this short report to the Government.

The Bill provides the legislative framework for replacement agricultural support schemes following leaving the EU.

Charter for a caring food policy that nourishes our health, the environment and animal welfare.

Our report details our recommendations for the new trade agreements for agricultural land use and food policy.

It is important to ensure that animal welfare is not compromised as part of the process to leave the EU and that opportunities are taken to improve existing policies and standards.

Farmwel is working to generate momentum towards sustainable and accountable mainstream agriculture and aquaculture, focussing on the environment, people’s livelihoods, and farm animal welfare.

What individual and collective actions relating to food and farming can we take, to hit our crucial climate targets?

The UK is a nation of animal lovers. And our Party has a proud record of standing up for animal welfare.

As the UK will soon no longer be bound by the EU’s free trade rules, we call for the Government to ban the live export trade for slaughter and fattening which over the years has caused immense suffering to our animals.