The expression “fish out of water” indicates a person who is in a situation in which nothing has to do with it, but have you ever stopped to ask yourself how much cruelty is celved in reality behind this way of saying?
Every year, billions of fish are caught and left to die suffocated in the air (or in frozen water). Now, for the first time, thanks to a study of the Welfare Footprint Institute of Dover, in the USA, we managed to quantify the suffering of the “fish out of water”: on average about twenty minutes of intense pain, which can Get up to an hour of agony For larger species. The study is published on Scientific Reports.
Anatomy of agony. To precisely determine the suffering of fish, the study uses a Index called Welfare Footprint Frameworkcreated by the same institute and which allows you to evaluate it in a standardized way. To calculate it, the Wff studies the different stages of pain crossed by an animal, and how long they last. And in the case of the fish pulled out of the water, which in the experiment were iride trout, the results are frightening.
Five seconds to a fish are enough to start suffering, and trigger a neurochemical response in the brain similar to what we humans associate with negative emotions. The absence of water then brings the gills of the fish to collapsewith consequent accumulation of co2 And no “air exchange”. This state in turn triggers i fish pain receptorswhich, however, being unable to get rid of the waste of breathing, meets slow suffocation. Depending on the size of the fish, the times of this process change: The little ones die after a couple of minutes, the older ones reach 25, with extreme peaks of one hour and in addition of intense pain.
Just fish out of water! The discovery, the authors of the study hope, could bring the fishing and fish breeding industry to rethink its methods. Suffocation in the air is the fastest way to kill many fish in one fell swoop, but the authors of the study suggest exploring the so -called rather electronarcosis (i.e. stunning animals with an electric discharge), also used in slaughterhouses.
The problem is that electronarchcosis is not yet 100%effective, and there are cases in which The fish remains only stunned and not unconscious until the moment of death. The advice of the team, therefore, is to return to work on this method considered more “human”, trying to increase its effectiveness e Gradually abandoning the old (and cruel) methodology of the “fish out of water”.
