Plans for Octopus Farm Raising Worries
February 23, 2022
A Spanish company is planning to open the first commercial octopus farm to raise the animals for food. The company claims its optimized operations overcome problems such as high animal mortality rates that plagued previous farming efforts. In Issues, a multidisciplinary group of researchers make a case against octopus farming. “We believe that octopuses are particularly ill-suited to a life in captivity and mass-production, for reasons both ethical and ecological,” Jennifer Jacquet and her colleagues write. Instead, they argue, private and public efforts should focus less on industrializing food systems and more on “achieving a truly sustainable and compassionate future for food production.”