A controversial plan to commercially farm octopus for meat has led to a US Senate bill that would ban the practice in the US and any imports linked to it, reports radio station KNKS.
S.4810, introduced to Congress on Thursday (July 25) by Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, and co-sponsored by Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, comes as scientists and animal welfare advocates express concern over a plan by Spanish seafood company Neuva Pescanova to establish an octopus farm in the Canary Islands.
As previously reported by Undercurrent News, the company revealed in 2022 that it wanted to develop the world's first octopus aquaculture plant, with a capacity for about 3,000 metric tons of octopus, which would account for 1% of the 300,000t world market.
Scientists say the highly intelligent octopuses would suffer.
Jonathan Birch, an associate professor at the London School of Economics, led a review of more than 300 scientific studies showing that octopuses feel pain and pleasure. Birch and his co-authors believe that high-welfare octopus farming is "impossible" and that killing in ice slurry "would not be an acceptable method of killing in a lab."
While there is no indication of plans for an industrial octopus farm in the US, the bill is intended to be a preemptive act to "prevent US companies from participating in this brutal practice before it takes root," said Murkowski.
"Octopuses are among the most intelligent creatures in the oceans. And they belong at sea, not suffering on a factory farm," Whitehouse is quoted as saying by National Public Radio.
The bill has no other co-sponsors and there is not yet a companion in the US House of Representatives.
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