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Do Fish Feel Pain?

Victoria Braithwaite / Oxford University Press / 256 pages

The realization that mammals and birds are capable of experiencing pain and distress has had a profound influence on our relationship with them. The knowledge of this pain capacity has inspired a substantial number of laws, ordinances, regulations, and policies that dictate how mammals and birds can and should be treated when used for food and fiber production, in research, as companion animals, in zoological displays, and in many other situations. Although there is much work still to be done in improving the lives of these animals, no one should question that mammals and birds need to be protected from unnecessary pain and distress.

But what about fish? Fish are hooked for recreation and food. Commercial fisheries capture and kill millions of fish every day. Fish are electro-shocked by researchers, managers poison unwanted fish in lakes and rivers, and the aquarium trade is thriving.

Do fish feelings matter?Victoria Braithwaite explores the science and the ethics behind fish pain and suffering in her groundbreaking work, Do Fish Feel Pain? Braithwaite is a Professor of Fisheries and Biology at Pennsylvania State University, and in her book she summarizes research—much of it her own—on pain and suffering in fish.

A chinook salmon isn't a golden retriever. And Braithwaite doesn't argue that it is. What these animals have in common, however, are mechanisms for detecting painful events, a nervous system that reacts during these events, and a behavioral or decision-making response to these events. In other words, a salmon, like a retriever, can sense, react, and respond to painful stimuli.

Braithwaite develops a convincing case that fish can feel pain. Although their expressionless faces and a lack of vocalization in response to painful stimuli—no yelps, cries, or shouts—make fish easy to ignore in discussions about animal welfare, her book clearly shows why it is meaningful and appropriate to discuss pain in fish.

The fundamental importance of this research is its effect on human decision-making. If fish can feel pain, if they can suffer, then how do we respond to this knowledge? What does it mean for catch and release angling? How should it be applied in commercial aquaculture? Should animal welfare proponents be as concerned about a swordfish caught with long-line fishing as a leatherback turtle?

This is a conversation that is long overdue. As Braithwaite writes, "Finding out what triggers or contributes to animal suffering allows us to find ways of avoiding it." It is time to include fish in our animal welfare discussions.

—Robert Schmidt, Ph.D., Department of Environment and Society, Utah State University, Logan, UT

Scientists Can't Decide If Fish Feel Pain

Have you ever gone fishing? Did you keep the fish and eat it? Or did you pull the hook out and toss it back into the water?

The second option, catch and release, has always felt a little...Wrong...To me.

Picture this: You're a fish. You're swimming along. You see a tasty worm, and chomp. BLAMMO! You're arching through the air, tugged by your mouth into the hands of some giant, overall-clad land-monster.

At this point, as a prey animal, you know what comes next. A sharp stab, a warm trickle, and then unfeeling, endless oblivion. You make your peace.

But then, imagine the big ugly human just plays with you for a few minutes while you gasp, unable to breath. Then there's a yank and your lip splits further (OW!) and you fly, splat, back to the blue deep. You think 'What the heck?' and then realize it's over and swim away. You're relieved, but still, what a jerk!

So fishing to eat makes sense to me. Catch and release? More like trout-bullying.

But the December 2016 issue of the journal Animal Sentience suggests that my moral intuition may be based on a fallacy: that catching a fish hurts the fish. You see, for a fish to hurt, it has to be able to feel pain.

The neurobiologist Brian Key, writing under the succinct title "Why do fish not feel pain?" lays out a compelling case that our finned, gilled, and scaled cousins simply don't have the brain structures to feel pain.

Human pain, he argues, happens in the cortex. That's the region of your brain associated with complex, conscious experience and thought. It's a complex system (even for a brain system), with a great deal of back-and-forth flow of information.

What does that mean?

The cortex doesn't just turn a stimulus, like a prick of the thumb, directly into an action, like yanking your hand away. That would be a one-way flow of information. Stimulus-reaction.

Instead your cortex turns the sensation over. What did that feel like? It hurt. Who did it to me? That fool. What am I going to do? Prick him right back when he least expects it. Ha ha! Stimulus-experience-consideration-reaction.

Fish certainly react to things that would be painful to people, swimming or flopping to avoid them. But they lack cortices, or any other structures in their brain that might do the multi-directional pain-processing job of the cortex. Key argues that without a cortex a fish can't feel the pain. Any behavior that looks like pain avoidance is really just the result of simple one-directional mental processes. Stimulus-reaction. Prick-flee.

Key points out that you can do things to a fish that would seem painful to a human eye, like drilling a hole in its head, without significantly impacting its behavior. You'd think that if a fish felt that overwhelming pain, it might find the experience a bit distracting.

He goes on to argue that a whole set of behaviors and experiences some researchers attribute to fish (anxiety, depression, discomfort, and so on) are really simple learning and avoidance that don't require any conscious thought.

That humans see so much complexity in fish, in his view, seems to say more about the people than the fish.

He can't prove that fish don't feel pain without actually living as a fish, he acknowledges, but science doesn't offer us any reason to assume they do.

Here's the thing though: Key's view isn't particularly popular among many of his colleagues.

Hanna Damasio and Antonio Damasio, a team of neuroscientists whose work on pain in humans Key cites in his paper, wrote one of several commentaries picking apart his argument.

Though they don't study fish pain, they write that Key is too simplistic in locating human pain entirely in the cortex. Yes, pain is more complex than the mere reflex that drives many simpler creatures through the world. And it is more difficult to figure out whether people without functioning cortices experience pain.

But there's real reason to think they do, or at least experience some of the unpleasant feeling-set we call "pain," because of processes in other regions of the brain, like the brain stem. Fish may not have cortices, but they certainly have brain stems.

There may not be enough evidence to prove fish feel pain, but Hanna Damasio and Antonio Damasio argue that Key doesn't marshal nearly enough evidence to show that they don't.

Some of Key's other critics are more pointed. Culum Brown, a biologist who studies fish behavior, writes a commentary that amounts to a long list of critics who reject Key's perspective.

I'd argue that the take away for us lay people isn't "it's totally cool to bully cod." But there is reason, as Key points out, to question our intuitions when we suggest (for example) that certain fishing behaviors should be banned.

At what point are we taking reasonable steps to protect animals from harm, and at what point are we making it harder for people to live because we're squeamish about some scientifically squishy inferences from thrashing fish?

Another takeaway? Consciousness, feelings, and experience are still concepts that science doesn't have a very good system for dealing with, especially when we're probing beyond the human mind. That's why both Key and his critics' arguments boil down to Look how much you don't know, and can't prove, not look at what I can prove.

There are no universally-accepted fundamental laws yet, or even that much in the way of common intuitions. The apple hasn't dropped on the head of consciousness studies' Isaac Newton. In the meantime, we're going to have to live without a definite answer about what happens in the mind of a hooked fish.

Why I Care About How Fish Feel -- And You Will, Too

This story starts with a VHS tape, to give you an idea how long ago it was. Once upon a time before YouTube, a student asked for cage-free eggs at his university dining hall. (I oversee the supply-chain policies for a food service company that partners with universities, corporations, and museums.) Like most people back then, I'd never heard of cage-free eggs. I needed to know more, so I called Josh Balk at the Humane Society of the United States, where he's now vice president of farm animal protection. He mailed me a VHS tape showing how battery cages are used in the egg industry.

I admit, I didn't believe chickens were worth caring about. "It's not like they're puppies," I remember thinking. But after watching footage of hens living in barren battery cages, where they have only 67 square inches of space — less than a standard sheet of paper — to live out their lives, I cared. A lot. That tape launched me on an immediate quest to find cage-free eggs and transition the company's entire supply chain, first to Certified Humane cage-free shell eggs that year, and eventually, pre-cracked (liquid) eggs, too. Other commitments followed.

Now I have my eye on a new animal-welfare issue: humane seafood, the importance of which may not seem totally clear to everyone at this point. Maybe you've seen these headlines: "Fish Depression is Not a Joke," or "It's Official: Fish Feel Pain." Maybe your reaction was to smirk or roll your eyes. Or maybe your first thought was "Well, yeah, obviously."

No matter what your reaction, scientists are building a case for the sentience of fish. While there are still some who deny that fish feel pain, there are enough who believe they do to convince me this is an issue worth pursuing — even without a video to watch.

A stunning development

In the U.K., the issue of humane seafood has already taken hold in the consumer market. Supermarket chains including Tesco, Waitrose and others have created policies on the humane treatment of farmed and, in some cases, wild-caught fish. In the U.S., the issue is still rising to the surface of public consciousness. There is no widely accepted humane seafood certification at this time, though multiple non-government organizations are working on policies and certifications that will better advocate for finned creatures.

I recently spoke to Lewis Bollard of the Open Philanthropy Project, a research and grant-making group, that has funded several projects to study fish welfare. He said the easiest way for us to start improving the treatment of fish in our food supply is to pay attention to how they die. Morbid, I know, but he has a point. Aquaculture operations have begun using stunning methods — typically percussive stunning or electrical shock — to render fish unconscious before slaughter, which is thought to reduce pain and anxiety for the fish. While stunning is primarily used on salmon and trout farms right now, there's potential for it to be used for other species.

Other areas of concern for fish welfare include stocking densities in aquaculture. In addition to a whole host of environmental problems caused by packing too many fish into a net pen or pond, some species require more space for their well-being. Interestingly, others prefer dense schooling. Also being identified are best practices for the handling of farm-raised fish: for example, the fewer times a fish is touched by humans, the better.

Some fishermen are already making changes. There's now a fishing vessel called Blue North that has adopted stunning technology for its wild-caught cod business. The cod are caught one at a time on hooks, then brought through a moon pool in the bottom of the boat, immediately stunned, and then slaughtered. A bonus of using this technology on fishing vessels is that it can also be better for workers, allowing them to work below deck away from fierce weather and waves. On land, better for animals often translates to better for workers, too. I've heard this from pig farmers who have gotten rid of gestation crates and chicken producers who have let natural light into the barns, which is one of the reasons I'm so passionate about animal care practices.

Start fishing for information

There aren't any perfect answers or certifications yet, but we can start by urging the suppliers we work with to seek out boats that use humane stunning methods. (We're already setting up meetings and tastings with Blue North so our chefs can learn about their wild cod.) I'll also keep talking to experts in the field of humane treatment to see what other good practices are emerging and suggest producers we work with implement those, too.

Just as was the case with laying hens, I never thought I'd care about how fish are feeling. But I do. And I predict others will too, so let's start doing something about it.

Although there are currently no labels for consumers to look for in the marketplace, I expect some to emerge in the next few years. In the meantime, if you care about this issue and want to know more, Tim Carman just covered fish pain in depth for the Washington Post, and Lewis Bollard's piece about humane treatment of fish is another great place to start. Next, Jonathan Balcombe's book What A Fish Knows is a deep dive into how science is revealing new information about fish intelligence and behavior.

For my colleagues in the food business, we all have an opportunity to take action. Check out the policies created by UK supermarket chains like Tesco, Waitrose, and Marks & Spencer and read the recommendations of the RSPCA. Start asking your seafood suppliers to look into the humane treatment of the fish they're buying for you, and consider telling them you want product from operations that are using pre-slaughter stunning methods. Let the seafood industry know — and any animal welfare groups you already work with — that this is an issue of concern for you and your business.

This is how change begins: with small steps that, if enough people and businesses take them together, become a leap forward.

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