Dear members of the HLPE-project team,
as board member of the Stichting Vissenbescherming (the Dutch Foundation for the Protection of Fish) I like to give some comments on the zero-draft consultation paper you wrote: The Role of Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture for Food Security and Nutrition.
For sure food security and nutrition is world wide a very important issue. But if you want to improve this with more animal products you also have to look at animal welfare. And if you want to improve food security and nutrition with more products from the fisheries and aquaculture you have to give attention to the affects of the fisheries and the aquaculture on the welfare of the fish that is caught or kept. In the addendum you find the pamphlet They experience stress, fear and pain I wrote about these welfare effects. The capture fisheries are with their present catch and killing methods and the more than a trillion fish that are each year the victims, the most cruel human activity to animals on this moment. In the aquaculture most kept fish also suffer a lot because of the used killing methods. Most fish farms must be considered as factory farming because of the infringement of the welfare of the kept fish.
In the paper you wrote there is no attention for fish welfare and that must be changed. No development can be named sustainable if it neglects animal welfare and that's not different for the fisheries and aquaculture. As soon as possible new catch and killing methods that harm fish a lot less must be developed for the capture fisheries. And in the aquaculture fish should also be killed in a way that they don't suffer. And the way fish is kept must be improved enormously, so these fish can develop their natural behaviours. I hope you agree with this and will mention in your final consultation paper the necessity of attention for the welfare of fish and of these changes in fishing methods and in the way fish is kept.
With the consultation paper as you have written it now, you contribute to the enormous suffering of fish caused by the fisheries and the aquaculture. You cannot do that.
I hope I made our vision clear. But if you have questions about this, please let us know.
With best regards,
Paul Denekamp
Paul Denekamp