Brussels (EFE).- The organizations Eurogroup for Animals and Compassion in World Agriculture asked this Thursday that plans to create the first octopus farm in the world in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria be discarded, an initiative promoted by the company Nueva Pescanova , due to the “cruelty” and the “environmental consequences” that they consider it would entail.
The animal organizations also urged in a statement that the European Union not use public funds to support the development of octopus farming or any other new industrial animal farming “in light of significant and growing scientific evidence that it is killing our planet”.
The entities assured that Nueva Pescanova’s plans for the farm sent to the General Directorate of Fisheries of the Canary Islands Government and “uncovered by Eurogroup for Animals” have raised “serious concerns”.
The concerns refer to “the use of a cruel method of slaughter, the confinement of octopuses in small sterile tanks and practices that contribute to the overexploitation of wild fish populations,” according to the animalists.
Eurogroup for Animals and Compassion in World Agriculture stated that one million octopuses will be raised and slaughtered each year in the future farm, which will produce 3,000 tons of this cephalopod annually.
According to the organizations in a report, the octopuses will be sacrificed by placing them in ice water without prior stunning, “an inhumane method that causes pain, fear and suffering” to the animals.
They detailed that Nueva Pescanova plans to sacrifice the octopuses by immersing them in tanks containing 500 liters of ice water at between -3 and 0 °C, “which will cause a painful, stressful and slow death.”
They also specified that the octopuses, “solitary by nature, will be kept in overcrowded conditions where they will run the risk of being attacked and cannibalized.”
The animal organizations affirmed that Nueva Pescanova’s operational plans recognize that octopuses live mostly solitary and that, however, they will remain in groups “with high densities within their farms.”
They assured that Nueva Pescanova is aware that the high densities of cephalopods can affect their well-being and create the risk of aggression, territorialism and cannibalism.
“To control this problem, the farm plans include the separation of individuals by sex and size,” according to the report.
The entities noted that plans to expose octopuses to 24 hours of artificial light during the breeding period to speed up spawning of females “may cause significant stress to the animals, as octopuses avoid light in the wild.” .
They criticized that the octopuses will be fed with commercial feeds that contain “fishmeal and fish oil as main ingredients, which poses high environmental risks.”
In their statement, the organizations stressed that if the project is approved, the Canary Islands would host the world’s first octopus farm, but they acknowledged that there are similar plans in countries such as Mexico and Japan.
Eurogroup for Animals CEO Reineke Hameleers called on the European Union to ban octopus farms “before they see the light of day.”
“Blindly setting up a new farming system without taking into account the ethical and environmental implications is a step in all the wrong directions and goes against the EU’s plans for sustainable food transformation,” he commented.
For her part, the research director of Compassion in world agriculture, Elena Lara, asked the Canary Islands authorities to “reject” Nueva Pescanova’s plans. EFE