Content area
Full text
For ethical and environmental reasons, raising octopuses in captivity for food is a bad idea.
Octopuses stand out among invertebrates for their complex behavior. They are capable of problem-solving, mimicking their surroundings using color changes that take place on a scale of seconds, outwitting predatory sharks, discriminating individual humans, engaging in playful behavior, and hunting in response to cooperative signals sent by fish. As these patterns of behavior suggest, octopuses (as well as some other cephalopods) have sophisticated nervous systems and large brains.
Given their exceptional abilities, one might ask whether humans should be eating octopus at all, but here we want to raise a different ethical question. As global demand for octopus grows, especially in affluent markets, so have efforts to farm them. We believe that octopuses are particularly ill-suited to a life in captivity and mass-production, for reasons both ethical and ecological.
Sheep were probably the first animals domesticated by humans for food, starting at least 9,000 years ago. Goats, cows, pigs, and chickens followed. In the twentieth century, in tune with economics and the norms of the Industrial Revolution, a factory model was applied to farming these animals, which facilitated an extraordinary increase in the number of animals produced for food. Factory farming also led to concerns about animal welfare and environmental impacts, including habitat loss, excessive use of fresh water, and pollution.
Until fairly recently, aquatic animals were mostly exempt from this factory-farming fate and were almost exclusively harvested from their natural habitats. Intensive aquaculture became part of the global food system in the latter half of the twentieth century and is now one of the fastest growing food industries. Aquatic animals are under rapid domestication, and approximately 550 different aquatic animal species, from oysters and shrimp to rainbow trout and even bluefin tuna, are raised in captivity in nearly 190 countries. Farmed aquatic animals now constitute half of the seafood market in many industrialized countries.
As with terrestrial animals, the intensive farming of aquatic animals is associated with animal welfare and environmental concerns, but little is known about how to ensure the welfare of farmed aquatic animals. Fish kept in captivity develop traits not seen in the wild and tend to be more aggressive, experience more chronic stress and...