Fish welfare: The use of CO₂ to avoid fish suffering during preparation to processing

Fish welfare has become a significant concern during the last decade. The issue of slaughter is getting the interest of many consumer organizations and fish growers, and suppliers. We need to take careful consideration to food fish slaughtering, and not only for an ethical reason. Numerous quality traits are in place already at the end of fish life. Nonetheless, other traits can be developed while the post mortem muscles are turning into consumer produce. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate ways to avoid the suffering of the fish before their processing. To improve the efficiency of the immobilizing and stunning process of the fish at the entrance of the fish plant, we investigated the use of CO2 in combination with low temperature. When combining CO2 to 2°C water temperature, fish were stunned and permanently immobilized within 20 min or less, while their core temperature was 3.5°C. Our results suggest that combining low temperature and bubbling CO2 in the fish receiving tank of the processing plant might be more appropriate for animal welfare. Therefore, we suggest continuing our experiments in the fish processing plant.