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Ethics and the Welfare of Fish

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The Welfare of Fish

Part of the book series: Animal Welfare ((AWNS,volume 20))

Abstract

To what extent fish can experience suffering and enjoyment is not just an empirical question, but one that also calls for ethical reflection. This is firstly, because animal welfare research is value laden and secondly, because the empirical evidence requires a normative framework in order to become action guiding in practices involving fish, such as aquaculture. In this chapter, we describe the role of ethics and different ethical theories that have been applied in animal ethics and that are relevant for discussions on fish welfare. We particularly focus on utilitarian, rights based, relational, and virtue ethical animal ethics theories. We furthermore argue that fish welfare is a term that combines moral norms and biological concepts. After all, when we implement fish welfare measures we have already made certain normative choices. We illustrate the integration between ethics and science in seven steps, from implementing fish welfare at the farm level, to weighing welfare against other values, defining and measuring welfare, to the questions of why welfare is morally relevant and what this means for the moral status of fish. We then consider the question of whether fish should be attributed to moral status and hence whether their welfare should be taken into account in our moral deliberations. However, not all moral concerns regarding our treatment of fish can be addressed by focussing on welfare. We discuss a number of concerns beyond welfare that need to be taken into consideration in a moral discussion on how to relate to fish: does the killing of fish constitute a moral harm? and how should we morally evaluate the process of domesticating fish in aquaculture? The chapter concludes by pointing out a number of moral issues in four practices involving fish: aquaculture, wild fisheries, experimentation, and recreation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We will use the terms ‘moral’ and ‘ethical’ interchangeably.

  2. 2.

    Although recently, Singer seems to have shifted back to the hedonistic version of utilitarianism of his earlier writing.

  3. 3.

    A being is a subject of a life, which can be understood as being able to experience one’s life subjectively, when they are sentient but also possess a certain form of self-awareness, memory, beliefs, perception of the future, and preference autonomy. Of course, an important question in this context is whether fish could be considered subjects-of-a-life. While Regan at the time of writing his seminal work The Case for Animal Rights did not consider them as such, scientific research into the physiology of fish has advanced since then.

  4. 4.

    We argue for this position in more detail in Bovenkerk, B. and Meijboom, F.L.B. (2013). ‘Fish Welfare in Aquaculture: Explicating the chain of interactions between science and ethics’ in Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, vol 26 (1): 41–61, special issue on fish welfare.

  5. 5.

    See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20121010012427/http://www.fawc.org.uk/freedoms.htm (accessed on July 3, 2018).

  6. 6.

    We argue for this position in more detail in B. Bovenkerk & F. Meijboom (2012). ‘The Moral Status of Fish. The importance and limitations of a fundamental discussion for practical ethical questions in fish farming’ in Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics vol. 25, iss. 6, pp. 843–860.

  7. 7.

    We should mention here that when we speak about ‘the harm of death’, we are talking about harm in a moral sense. Of course death harms a fish in the sense that its body is damaged—in the same sense as a plant can be harmed when it is cut—but is this a harm that matters morally?

  8. 8.

    When confronted with avoidance behaviour of animals that are in danger, such as the struggling for survival of a fish on a hook, at first sight we might interpret this as a fear of death. Singer (1980), however, warns us against taking this to mean a preference for continued existence. Rather, we should interpret this as a desire to stop the pain or the threatening situation and of course this desire can also come about by killing the animal.

  9. 9.

    While the foregone opportunities account seems rather plausible, it does raise a troubling question, namely whether we can really be deprived of something if we do not exist anymore. After all, when we are dead, we do not know what we are missing. This problem has spurned a philosophical debate too complex to discuss within the scope of this chapter. This debate centres on the question of whether you can be harmed by something even if you do not experience this harm and no consensus has as of yet been reached in this debate (Nagel 1991; Silverstein 1980).

  10. 10.

    We build on the definition of domestication given by Swart and Keulartz (2011) who make a distinction between wild and domesticated animals on the basis of two characteristics: the degree to which an animal has adapted to its human environment and the degree to which it is dependent on humans. The more an animal has adapted and the more dependent it is on humans, the more domesticated it is. We use this definition because it remains neutral on the human intentions by which animals were domesticated (i.e. domestication can be the product of unintended and unforeseen selection pressure that we have put onto animals) and emphasizes the fact that wildness and domesticity are matters of degree. Regarding the part of the definition about adaptation, we assume that this adaptation is generally passed on to the next generation and that the genetic make-up of domesticated animals has changed.

  11. 11.

    http://www.fao.org/3/a-i5692e.pdf (accessed 2/7/2018).

  12. 12.

    http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2014/02/05/fish-farms-global-food-fish-supply-2030 (accessed 2/7/2018).

  13. 13.

    https://www.asc-aqua.org/the-principles-behind-the-asc-standards/ (accessed on 2/7/2018).

  14. 14.

    These arguments are explained in more detail in Bovenkerk, B. & Kaldewaij, F. (2014). ‘The Use of Animal Models in Behavioural Neuroscience Research’, in: G. Lee, J. Illes, and F. Ohl (eds), Current Topics in Behavioural Neuroscience. Berlin: Springer, pp. 17–46.

  15. 15.

    Of course, one could argue that in assessing for replacement alternatives to an experiment, the fact that animals are killed is indirectly assessed. However, replacement in practice does not seem to have the highest priority for those carrying out experiments. See Franco et al. (2018).

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Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Victoria Braithwaite and Frederike Kaldeway for their collaboration on book chapters (Bovenkerk and Braithwaite 2016; Bovenkerk and Kaldewaij 2014; Bovenkerk and Meijboom 2012; Bovenkerk and Meijboom 2013) that have served as input for this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophy Group, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Bernice Bovenkerk

  2. Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Animals in Science and Society, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Franck Meijboom

Authors
  1. Bernice Bovenkerk
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  2. Franck Meijboom
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Correspondence to Bernice Bovenkerk .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway

    Tore S. Kristiansen

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Anders Fernö

  3. Department of Biology, University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece

    Michail A. Pavlidis

  4. IMARES, Wageningen University & Research Centre, YERSEKE, The Netherlands

    Hans van de Vis

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Bovenkerk, B., Meijboom, F. (2020). Ethics and the Welfare of Fish. In: Kristiansen, T., Fernö, A., Pavlidis, M., van de Vis, H. (eds) The Welfare of Fish. Animal Welfare, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41675-1_2

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