Hi everyone, a few weeks ago I collected data on fish handling practices, economic factors, and fish welfare in Thailand for my MSc project, “Bridging Gaps in Aquaculture: A Field Study on Economics and Fish Welfare in Thai Markets”. This project was funded by Open Philanthropy. I have spent the past weeks analyzing the data and have uncovered some interesting findings.
Farm Practices
Data was collected from both pond and cage farms. Harvesting and transportation practices (e.g., starving duration, netting duration, transportation method) at pond farms are more varied compared to cage farm practices which are more standardized. These differences lead to varying welfare concerns, making it difficult to create standard guidelines for all pond farms.
Also, harvesting practices like grading fish on dry trays in pond farms causes more physical damage compared to grading fish in water at cage farms.
Anesthetized red tilapia in an oxygenated water tank, prepared for transportation
Some pond farms starve their fish for up to 7 days before they start harvesting while cage farms only starve their fish for 1 or 2 days, too long starving period may cause suffering in fish and affect farmers profit as the fish start to lose weight. Longer harvesting days and netting duration can also affect fish welfare. Longer harvesting days exposes fish to longer periods without food (extended from starving period), while longer netting at high densities causes stress and injury from physical contract. Reducing harvest and netting times or improving transportation could reduce fish suffering and enhance both welfare and product quality, although this may come at a higher cost.
Distribution Market Practices
Distribution markets may be a critical welfare point in the supply chain. Fish are transported in ice, dry, or oxygenated water, arriving at the markets in various conditions—alive, moribund, or dead. Fish transported in oxygenated water generally have better physical condition and cleanliness than those transported dry or in ice. Unloading fish onto hard concrete, grading them into baskets, and leaving them without water for around 90 minutes leads to stress, suffering, or death. Fish are often exposed to air, stepped on, or spiked, causing further damage. Fish transported out of distribution markets are mainly processed and sold in retail markets or redistributed in other distribution markets.
Fish in baskets waiting for distribution
Retail Market Practices
Common live fish species sold in retail markets include Nile tilapia, red tilapia, catfish, and snakehead, while silver barb, rohu, and pangasius are usually sold dead. Holding systems for live fish in retail markets range from dry systems, shallow water (5-15 cm), aerated shallow water to aerated tanks. Better holding systems provide more suitable conditions for fish, giving better physical condition and cleanliness, but they need more operational costs. However, the fish prices are similar across all holding systems, meaning retailers with cheaper systems may make higher profits.
Each retailer sells an average of 212 ± 185 kg of fish daily, with a sales period between 3 to 16 hours. There is a moderate positive relationship between the sales period and number of fish sold. However, longer sales periods may affect fish welfare negatively, because the fish must stay longer in the holding systems.
Common stunning techniques in the markets is percussive stunning (a blow to the head), especially for Nile tilapia, red tilapia, and snakehead. The tools for percussive stunning are cleaver spine or wooden priest. However, 41% of these Nile tilapia and red tilapia are held in dry systems, meaning they may suffer and die from asphyxia. Catfish are mostly stunned by percussive stunning (64%), with some retailers using pithing (27%) or embedded the catfish in salt (9%).
Overall Practices
The complexity of the value chain leads to cumulative damage to fish, with more handling increasing stress, physical damage, and risk of death.
Farmers and retailers have ideas for improving practices, but these ideas are not implemented because it does not improve their profit, and customers continue to accept the fish as it is. One retailer has changed the practices due to customer requests, which had a positive impact on his business.
Fish prices are determined from negotiation between stakeholders, with buyers often buying from sellers who offer the lowest price. This competition resulted in prices decreasing to a point where they made little to no profit margin and led to no opportunities to improve practices. Regarding the price, Nile tilapia and red tilapia price increased by 75% and 47% from farm to customer, respectively. In comparison, chicken and pig prices increased by approximately 70.8% and 86.3%, respectively, indicating that the price increases for fish were not higher than those for other livestock.
A retailer from which buyers often purchase fish for release
Welfare Perception and Awareness
Only 25.7% of participants had heard of fish welfare, while 100% of them knew that fish could feel pain. Fish welfare was the least important factor for customers in retail markets. Most customers check fish physical condition (90%), price (77%), behavior (57%), reaction by touching (47%), and gills (33%) before deciding to buy a fish.
Retailers reported that customers had commented that fish are suffering in retailers’ holding systems and slaughtering practices, but all those customers still bought the fish.
“Significant changes to handling practices at each stage are needed to effectively improve fish welfare. However, even small changes to better integrate welfare into market practices would be a good start.”
Fish Releasing
Retailers state that fish releasing is very common in the markets, as their customers often buy live fish to release into nearby rivers.
Conclusions
From these findings, it's clear that poor welfare practices are prevalent in Thai markets and should be improved to enhance fish health, product quality, and support ethical and sustainable practices. In my next blog, I will discuss the limitations of this study, ideas for improvement, and potential further research.
Thank you for following this post, and I hope this post provides useful insights into current practices in the value chain. If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to contact me at arh00062@students.stir.ac.uk. A special thanks to Open Philanthropy for funding this project.