U.K.-based farmed animal welfare nonprofit Compassion in World Farming is urging U.K. retailers to develop robust internal welfare policies and adhere to them closely when it comes to sourcing salmon, rather than continuing to be overly reliant on third-party assurances.
Some retailers have begun to disclose species-specific welfare criteria in their sourcing policies, but it’s still a case of too few and too little, according to Compassion Fish Food Business Manager Matt Baron, who added that many retailers simply tout certification labels that don’t include welfare assurances.
“We tell them it’s OK to have those assurances, but that they really should take ownership of the welfare direction they are going in and be a leader, showing the public what they are doing behind the scenes,” Baron said. “Assurance schemes have their place, and they've served the industry well until now. A lot of food businesses see them as a kind of holy grail in terms of their labeling, but – and this is no secret – many certification schemes will … agree they’re lacking specifics when it comes to welfare. I think many have now noticed this demand from their supply chain and outside stakeholders. They’ve started looking into it and started some improvements, but they're still quite a way behind where they need to be.”
To spur the drive toward developing better internal welfare policies, Compassion recently launched its Salmon Retailer Spotlight, comparing U.K. retailer policies on its own-brand fresh, frozen, and smoked salmon. This analyzes a different part of the supply chain than the organization’s Salmon Welfare Scorecard, which evaluates global salmon producers’ public-facing welfare policies.
The scorecard has asserted that as an industry, aquaculture lags behind the welfare policies that livestock production boasts.
“It’s not anything untoward or sinister. It’s just that in a general sense, when it comes to the reporting of welfare and innovations in farming systems, aquaculture is lagging behind land-based farming for transparency,” Baron said. “Aquaculture is also not necessarily behind the times because it has been accelerating its progress quite quickly, but it’s been out of the limelight and probably gets a little bit forgotten with land-based taking a front-and-center position … because it's a very visible thing – unlike farming in the water, which is quite hidden from the public eye.”
To catch up with livestock operations, Compassion’s Food Business team has recommended that retailers provide consumers with clear information about the welfare standards of the salmon that they’re buying. Such public communication has been limited thus far, Baron said.
“I think it's just a case of [retailers] haven't really had any pressure put on them – whether that's from NGO partners, from customers, or from the industry. That type of pressure is probably only going to come from stakeholder partners or the general public, and I don’t think there’s been much of that until recent years,” he said. “But recently, some NGOs have become quite aggressive and have been exerting a lot more pressure on them.”
Baron said that the Compassion in World Farming approach is not as aggressive as other NGOs and aims to recognize the hoops retailers have to jump through to begin implementing such changes.
“We'll always encourage the industry to improve and be the best it can be, but as a food business unit, we're all about stepwise change. We know change doesn't happen overnight, and it certainly doesn't happen overnight within businesses,” he said. “There are a lot of processes they need to go through, so we're about gradually making it more visible and transparent. I think that's now happening.
Even certification bodies have come to Compassion for guidance on welfare improvements, he said.
“The industry is opening up, and transparency is key. It's crucial. Seafood has always been a little bit guarded as an industry, but it’s important that everyone starts to engage, even if it’s just at a kind of baseline level because that's when you start to get these incremental changes and start to move the right way,” he said.
With a similar approach to the producer scorecard, the Retailer Spotlight uses six key welfare criteria to make its determinations: humane slaughter practices, stocking density limits, fasting times, the use of key welfare indicators, cleaner fish welfare, and recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) policy.
The spotlight highlights the public corporate policies of U.K. retailers such as Aldi, Lidl, Amazon Fresh, ASDA, Iceland, M&S, Morrisons, Ocado, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Co-op, and Waitrose, with preliminary findings stating that seven of the 12 retailers claim they require humane methods of slaughter. The same number claim they recognize the importance of using Key Welfare Indicators, but only Waitrose, M&S, Sainsbury’s, and Co-op publicly report on these measures. The same four companies are also the only ones to have policies in place that limit stocking densities to 17 kilograms per cubic meters or less and under 72-hour fasting practices, according to the spotlight.
While most of the criteria focuses on traditional salmon-farming practices, the land-based RAS parameters for salmon represent an acknowledgement of the changes taking place within the salmon sector, Baron explained.
“It is a clear direction of where production is heading in, so there needs to be a good understanding of what’s happening in these systems and how the industry is affected in terms of sustainability and welfare,” he said.
Currently, though, ensuring humane slaughter remains the “flagship” welfare criteria – mainly because it’s usually the first question consumers have about seafood, he said.
“Our supporters ask how the fish are coming to an end. They want to know it’s humane and that they’re effectively stunned in the same way that land-based animals are,” Baron said. “I can comfortably say that all the companies I work with, particularly in salmon, are leading the way in what they do. For some species, it’s lagging, and they have some catching up to do, but for salmon, it's really good. We don't really have to fight to get those standards improved.”
Compassion intends to deliver a new Salmon Welfare Scorecard in October 2026, with the inclusion of additional global producers and updated scoring criteria.
