Leverage Points: strategic prioritisation for Animal Advocacy in India (Part 2 of 3): Strategies, and asks for aquatic animals

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This is Part 2 of Leverage Points: strategic prioritisation for Animal Advocacy in India, Animal Ask's assessment of where advocates and funders in India can achieve the most for animals. This part weighs the strategies open to advocates and what each has delivered in India so far, then sets out how we compare interventions and applies that to shrimp and fin-fish aquaculture.

The executive summary and key takeaways are on the overview page. The complete report, including all three parts and the full reference list, is available as a single PDF.

Read the report

Overview and executive summary.
Part 1: The scale of animal use in India.
Part 2: Strategies, and asks for aquatic animals (you are here)
Part 3: Asks for land animals, policy and food systems.
Download the full report (PDF)

4. Strategies for animal advocacy in India

Animal advocates in India have a wide range of strategic tools available, but the right combination of strategies depends heavily on the issue, the species affected, and where those animals sit within India's particular economic and political landscape. This section walks through the main approaches in turn: private sector work (corporate campaigns, welfare credits, and direct cooperation with producers), public sector work (policy advocacy and strategic litigation), movement building, animal welfare science, and more exploratory interventions aimed at informal markets. None of these are uniformly best. Cage-free corporate campaigns may be the most cost-effective tool available against formal hospitality and retail chains, but making little headway against the bulk of egg production sold through kiranas and wet markets. Public interest litigation has produced landmark rulings but has also seen those rulings diluted or reversed where downstream institutional support did not exist to sustain them. Direct engagement with producers may be the most viable lever for shrimp or aquaculture, but is poorly suited to dairy, where the average farmer keeps fewer than three animals.

Several features of the Indian context shape which strategies are likely to travel well. The informal market dominates retail food sales, an estimated 80–93% depending on the source, and most farmed animal supply chains are fragmented, geographically dispersed, and difficult to trace. Enforcement of existing animal welfare law is weak, with many offences non-cognizable, penalties trivial, and inspection capacity sparse outside the most visible cases of cruelty. Framing also matters more than in most other contexts: asks built around farmer livelihoods, food safety, child nutrition, public health, or environmental protection may travel further than asks framed purely around animal welfare, and asks that read as Western, Hindu-vegetarian, or implicitly anti-Muslim carry meaningful reputational and political risk. Strategies that have worked well elsewhere often need substantial adaptation here, and some interventions reach a smaller absolute share of production than they would in a more formalised market, though that share, in India, can still represent populations of animals comparable to entire countries.

The remainder of this section assesses each strategic family in its own terms, drawing on the evidence available from India and from analogous contexts where Indian-specific evidence is thin.

4.1. Private sector welfare work

4.1.1 Corporate engagement and campaigns

Corporate work has been a highly effective lever for change in Western countries (1). It allows a relatively small campaign group to mobilise public concern to hold companies accountable for the countless animals in their supply chain. Mendez et al (2023) found that across 44 countries, new cage-free commitments in that country were associated with a reduction in the number of hens living in cages in that particular country (2). Though this mechanism depends on certain preconditions for the structure of the supply chain and characteristics of target companies (3). These are not present everywhere but the approach has seen promising adoptions in other regions with adaptation to local circumstances (4).

The first challenge for private sector work in the Indian context is the dominance of the informal market. India’s retail market is dominated by markets and small shops known as kiranas (5). India’s retail food industry is approximately $869 billion (6) with the informal market representing 80% to 93% of the total market depending on the source (6). The food services sector (restaurants, catering, and street food) is somewhat more formalized, at an estimated 45 to 50% of formalization and is expected to rise to 55% by 2030 (7). Finally, the online retail market is still small at $12 billion USD in sales per year, but is growing even faster with a growth rate potentially as high as 40% per year (8).

India’s level of formalisation on the producer side varies by sector (refer to section 2 for overviews of the sectors) but often is much more fragmented than most other markets, and importantly often lacks traceability.

Nevertheless, the formal retail market is growing, with one source estimating this at 11% per year (9). While we could not find the rate of growth of the informal market, perhaps because of the difficulty measuring it, the formal market does seem to be gaining ground on it (10). Consumers are more likely to shop at formal markets as they become more affluent (6), suggesting that these growth rates will continue. Though having said this, India's informal market has remained unusually large, suggesting some structural reasons why it might continue.

Traditional corporate campaigns rely on both levels of formalisation of both the retail and food service markets and formalisation of the supply side. Formal retail markets are important to enable wins against companies that represent meaningful shares of the total market and who are sensitive to concern over carefully cultivated public images (3). Formalization of the supply side enables appropriate tracing, labelling and assurance of welfare standards so that companies can adopt welfare reforms.

At a minimum, this smaller relative size of the formal market represents a ceiling on the impact that traditional corporate work might have. Given the massive size of the Indian retail economy, even a small proportion of this represents a very large formal sector, large enough to justify corporate work. In some sense we see a picture of two economies in India, one urban, more akin to a but not yet a fully formal sector, with higher incomes and more demand for animal products per capita, and another in rural India with lower dispersed demand focused in informal markets. Given the total size of the market, even though the formal market is relatively small, the total volume is still comparable to the total markets of entire countries. It is also plausible to us that getting improvements in formal markets could spill over into informal markets, and could therefore be a useful stepping stone in the Indian animal advocacy movement.

At the time of writing, Chicken Watch reports that of 73 Indian corporate commitments, 13 (18%), report fulfilment, 49 (68%) report progress but not yet fulfilment, and 10 (14%) are not reporting.

4.1.2 Welfare credits

Welfare credits (also known as impact incentives) allow companies to offset the harms of their supply chain by reducing harm elsewhere. These aim to solve a key challenge with corporate commitments in fractured markets like India where there is a lack of verified higher welfare production capacity to meet demand in areas companies operate.

The key example of this currently is with Cage-free credits, which is a system that allows food businesses to purchase credits from certified cage-free egg producers to offset their use of conventional caged eggs, by paying farmers to switch to cage-free farming (11). The company issuing the credits lets farmers bid on how much they are willing to be paid to switch over to cage-free production, hopefully capturing the real difference in production costs for the farmers. This is a temporary solution, primarily used in regions with limited cage-free supply, to help companies meet their cage-free commitments by providing financial support for the growth of cage-free farms (11). This principle could be adapted to credits for other welfare reforms. They are just particularly competitive in the case of cage-free campaigning and have only been developed in this case.

For example, if a restaurant with a commitment is only able to source 10% of cage-free eggs because of lack of labelling and certification in that area, it can put a bounty for caged farmers throughout the country to transition to cage-free, allowing the remaining 90% to be offset. The restaurant labels the remaining 90% of eggs as caged, but it does get to count as having fulfilled its commitment through the offset. The farmers who have newly transitioned to cage-free farming sell their eggs into the market as caged at competitive conventional prices (12), displacing caged eggs from the market.

Cage-free credits operate on a similar logic to carbon credits. In carbon markets, these credits allow companies and individuals to buy and trade offsets to their emissions, with revenue going to projects that reduce or avoid emissions in other places. The structural parallel is close enough that the problems documented in the carbon credit market have some external validity to this approach. Two problems are highlighted prominently in the literature on carbon credits: miscounted impact and moral hazard (13,14).

Miscounted impact refers to cases where the purported impact does not in fact hold counterfactually. In the climate literature this refers to situations, for instance whereby a forest which was not going to be logged, is sold for carbon credits (13). In the case of cage-free credits this refers to cases where farms would have switched to cage-free anyway. In this case the counterfactual impact would be greatly reduced (it would just function as a subsidy or post hoc incentive).

However, our impression is that cage farming is currently quite entrenched in India and the base rate for spontaneous switches to cage-free farming are quite low. The shift to selling eggs from these farms as caged rather than cage-free also mitigates this counterfactual risk, as these eggs should displace other caged eggs from the market. The miscounted impact problem is structurally different as unlike carbon credits, where the counterfactual is genuinely hard to measure, cage-free credits fund a discrete physical change, a producer either converts to a cage-free system or does not. This makes it more straightforward to verify. Double counting is also less of a structural risk, since a credit tied to a specific farm's production cannot simultaneously be claimed by two buyers under a well-administered registry.

The most significant of these is moral hazard. In the context of cage-free credits this refers to the case in which cage-free credits end up functioning as an alternative long term adaptation of actual cage-free sourcing for the company, providing a perverse moral incentive for that outcome. For companies to ultimately source cage-free, relationships and supply lines must be established. Cage-free credits build out production in the country, but do not directly fix other sourcing issues.

Here again the structure of credits is used to mitigate this risk as they are framed only as a temporary solution. Additionally, even in the case that it delays a company from building out its supply lines to purchase cage-free eggs, cage-free credits will increase the number of cage-free eggs in the country, which can still contribute to broader adoption within the country.

If sourcing is not sufficiently developed while credits are being bought, then as long as those credits are indeed counterfactually valid, they will still have a significant impact for the time being, but they do not have the added benefit of contributing to developed supply chains. We therefore think that cage-free credits are a very useful tool in fractured markets such as India. Although, from the existing analogous studies into carbon credits, whether they accelerate or decelerate overall supply chain transition, it is possible credits are more of a patch to corporate commitment rather than increasing the speed of overall transition. So their impact is contingent on corporate engagement work, and cost-effectiveness depends on the immediate short-term impact.

4.1.3 Cooperative work with producers

Animal health, welfare, and farm profit are well connected - at least when comparing conditions that result in disease, and larger loss of life and produce. So, to a point farmers’ incentives for animal care and intensification align with the interests of animals in their care. This does diverge as market incentives to provide access to natural behavior, or to treat diseases beyond the economic value of individual animals will not return a profit. Although, many farmers may still prefer to farm in traditional ways rather than fully adopting the profit motive towards industrialisation.

Farms in India are particularly disorganised and fragmented amongst many owners. This makes one-on-one engagement with producers to improve standards difficult to scale for many sectors. This is particularly true for industries such as goat, sheep, and dairy farming where the average number of animals owned by each farmer is very low. However, industries such as fish and chicken farming which may have tens of thousands of individuals, or shrimp with hundreds of thousands of individuals, would benefit from per farm direct engagement.

In India many farmers are also organised into cooperatives or Farmer Producer Organizations (FPOs) which are collective groups of farmers, especially small and marginal ones, that aim to improve their income and bargaining power. They are often registered as Producer Companies under the Companies Act, but can also be a cooperative or any other legal form which provides for sharing of profits/benefits among the members (15). The impetus for FPOs is that smaller farmers don’t have the economies of scale and bargaining power to ensure they receive fair prices for both agricultural inputs and outputs. Working through these large organisations can increase the leverage over producers, in and as far as they can enact change among their members.

There are a few methods of engagement with farmers, FPOs or other producers that include:

providing information or training to alter behaviour of producers;
providing services or technical assistance that improve welfare often with additional requirements to improve conditions; and
directly compensating producers for welfare improvements.

Approaches like training are relatively low investment per farmer and rely on farms altering their own behaviours, either because of economic incentives or their inherent value for animal welfare. We have some isolated evidence of the effectiveness of similar programs resulting in improvements in knowledge (16,17) which can result in reduction in mortality (18,19) but others have null results on productivity (20). Overall, it is difficult to conclude much from the literature on farmer training. We expect some farmer training programs may be effective but they won’t all be worth investing in.

Providing services or compensation for improvements provides incentives to push beyond this point but comes with higher costs per farmer. The most cost-effective tactics to use within a given industry or with certain farmers will vary depending on the gap between current conditions, an optimal productivity scenario, and consideration for health and welfare beyond profit. For this reason these programs cannot be broadly said to be effective, but in certain circumstances may substantially improve the lives of animals and farmers for the investment required.

Distinct from the direct theory of change of improving conditions through engagement are so called ‘model farms’. These are higher welfare producers who serve as proof of concept for alternative production systems. Their primary theory of change is showing other producers, consumers, and the government that higher welfare farms are possible. In India farmers cite openness to welfare improvements like cage-free but report a lack of support in the form of financial assistance, technical training, and promotion of the cage-free sector (21). This work is complimentary to welfare credits as initial credit funded farms will also serve as model farms for subsequent transitions.

4.2. Public-sector work

4.2.1 Policy advocacy

Measuring the impact of any particular policy effort is inherently difficult due to the hidden nature of policy advocacy and the many 'faces' of power and influence it can exert. The most obvious are wins and losses on particular policy issues, but policy makers also work to control the agenda and shift the preferences of other actors (22). Adding to this, much of the literature studying the effect of policy advocacy focuses on the USA and the EU, with much less on countries such as India. “Nevertheless, the belief that policy advocacy is a worthwhile endeavour remains widespread among academics, the public, and advocates themselves” (Baumgartner et al. 2009). While nobody seriously believes that policy advocacy is ineffective (Leech 2010), academic research has found it difficult to prove its effectiveness - a scientific challenge that dates back to at least the 1960s. (22).

India presents a distinctive case in the comparative politics of business-government relations as it has no formal advocacy regulation or registration regime (23). Policy advocacy in India is practiced by most politico-economic actors, but their actions largely remain discreet. Influence is exercised through personal relationships between industrialists and politicians or bureaucrats, and through industry associations (FICCI, CII, ASSOCHAM) serving as formal intermediaries (24). The influence of policy advocates tends to be more dependent on these networks and relationships than expertise in the public policy issue (24). This potential makes routes for influence such as public consultations less, though somewhat, important. The government itself shows less regard for this process, with 89% of bills introduced in parliament from June 2014 to May 2019 marked as having no or incomplete consultation and done in secrecy (25).

There are many successful examples of policy advocacy for animals in India. One such example is the campaign to ban cosmetics testing on animals. PETA India and People for Animals (PFA) had been actively working towards a ban for many years, when the Bureau of Indian Standards' (BIS) cosmetics testing standards came up for revision in 2012. PETA secured the only animal rights organisation seat on the BIS PCD 19 Cosmetics Sectional Committee and used it to propose the removal of animal tests and the inclusion of non-animal testing methods, which ultimately paved the way for the legislative bans on testing for cosmetics and importing cosmetic tested products that passed in 2014 (26).

Advocacy can occur in individual groups, or in coalitions where groups of actors share beliefs and coordinate efforts to influence public policy (27). While existing work generally assumes actors are better off working together than individually, it is difficult to distinguish causation or correlation. Though existing scholarship does indicate these coalitions have some influence over policy (27). There are multiple examples of successful coalitions within the animal advocacy movement but existing scholarship also highlights the importance of wide collaboration across sectors. With potential allies in the environmental, health, and development movements in the region (28,29).

Policy advocacy can certainly be effective but depends largely on the importance of the policy and how viable reform is. From the areas below there are multiple reforms which meet this criteria and could be advanced through policy. The biggest overarching problem with policy advocacy work in India is lack of enforcement for many policy options. Although, this is in and of itself an area for potential reform as we discuss below. We also note that because of the general difficulties of assessing the impact of policy advocacy, compounded by its unregulated nature in India, this analysis is an incomplete accounting of its value.

4.2.2 Strategic litigation

Perhaps the most distinctively Indian feature of the movement for animal advocacy in India has been the role of strategic litigation (also known as public interest litigation). This avenue to change has understandably been focused on because it is more powerful in India than it is in many other countries. This is because of a more relaxed view of who has standing to litigate (allowing NGOs to file litigation on behalf of disadvantaged others); the potential for more powerful and expansive verdicts (and a judiciary who have been historically more bullish in doing so); as well as stronger powers for deciding on the ongoing implantation of the verdicts (30).

However, despite the historic power of this method, recently there has been criticism and pushback on public interest litigation as a route to change (30). Public interest litigation has been accused of judicial overreach, and of trying to answer questions which would be better handled by the legislative system. The Supreme Court recently emphasized that PILs should usually not be used to challenge policy decisions (30).

The courts have also been criticized about spending time on frivolous or inappropriate cases, undermining the court’s overall credibility and blocking the system for more important cases to come through. The Supreme Court has also pledged to filter new public interest litigation cases more rigorously (30). If true, this can both hamper the ability for animal advocacy cases to get a fair hearing and stymie the acceptance and implementation of any positive verdicts.

This concern may be overstated as one analysis found that public interest litigation accounted for approximately only 1% of total Indian Supreme Court cases (31), but the courts still have general backlogs. Despite the prominence of public interest litigation in the country, India actually has a shortage of judges (15 judges per million people, below the recommended 50 judges per million) (32). This results in an extraordinary backlog of cases. The supreme court of India has approximately 87,500 pending cases (32).

In 2012 the Animal Welfare Board of India advised the central and state governments that confining hens in battery cages violates Section 11(1)(e) of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, and recommended that existing cages be phased out within five years (i.e. by 2017). Neither the central nor state governments took significant action on this advisory (33).

Following this failure of implementation and enforcement, public interest litigations were filed in many Indian states including cases in Uttarakhand and Gujarat. These were consolidated into a case to be heard by the Delhi High Court. However, this was successfully appealed first in Uttarakhand by poultry associations appealing to a right to livelihood in Article 21 of the constitution. This was petitioned up to the Supreme Court which stayed Uttarakhand state level ban. Ultimately, a watered down piece of legislation was later developed and implemented in response to court pressure: the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Egg Laying Hens) Rules, 2023 (33). Meanwhile, the Delhi High Court ban is still pending (34).

While the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Egg Laying Hens) Rules, 2023, has significant welfare provisions that can affect the lives of hundreds of millions of hens if properly enforced, they are well short of the benefits of a full battery cage ban. The minimum floor space requirement of 550cm² per bird, is an improvement on typical battery cage spacing of 420 cm², but less significant compared to enriched cages (750cm² per bird). Therefore, if the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (Egg Laying Hens) Rules 2023 is taken to be the end result of this work towards a battery cage ban, it unfortunately must be seen as unsuccessful.

If this effort had been successful in banning battery cages across India, it would represent a massive animal welfare win, arguably the single biggest animal welfare win to date. It is very impressive that multiple courts ruled favourably on this point. Having said this, the consistent lack of follow-through suggests that this ask may have been too big for the time.

There are multiple other cases in a similar vein. For example:

AWBI v. A. Nagaraja on jallikattu (2014): this case initially resulted in a nationwide ban on jallikattu, a bull fighting sport that originates in Tamil Nadu. The ruling recognizes that animals have legal rights, notably including the five freedoms and the prevention of unnecessary suffering. This was taken to imply a ban on jallikattu, but this was eventually overridden, being replaced by some limited animal welfare legislation on the practice.
Narayan Dutt Bhatt v. Union of India (2018): following a case on behalf of the cruel treatment of horses in the Indian-Nepali border in 2018, the Uttarakhand High Court declared that all members of the animal kingdom are legal persons, with the attendant rights entailed by that. This was taken to imply certain limited welfare regulations concerning working animals, though the broader consequences of this have been unclear (35). Though this has latter be stayed

Overall, an extraordinarily large amount has been promised to animals because of public interest litigationwork in India. However, the follow-through on this has been dramatically weaker. One plausible explanation is that many of these judgments have arrived before sufficient social, market, and political alignment existed to sustain them. In such cases, courts and advocates have moved faster than consumer attitudes, industry readiness, or electoral incentives, leaving reforms vulnerable to delay, dilution, or reversal. Unfortunately, this follows a more widespread implementation gap for legislation in India, especially animal welfare legislation.

By contrast, interventions that require lighter adjustments or align more closely with existing interests may be durable. We suggest that advocates could look for cases that meet this criteria, and test this approach with public interest litigation.

Cases that involved a ‘lighter push’ could still improve the lives of huge numbers of animals. For example, we found no cases of public litigation on behalf of fish or shrimp, and few cases on behalf of chickens. While public sentiment for these animals may be weaker, the judiciary have proved remarkably sympathetic so far and there are strong environmental, labour welfare, disease control, consumer safety angles that these industries touch on. Similarly, cases that involve a preemptive ban, like a ban on broiler cages, outlined later, might receive more interest because they do not face entrenched industry interests.

Having said this, there is a good argument that some of the wins advancing the rights of animals in general have been very valuable despite not yet achieving concrete results. Improving the situation of animals is a long battle ahead and we might be able to build on these victories to achieve more concrete gains for animals in the future. Unfortunately, it is hard to measure impact, especially with how sparse changes on the ground are in India. This should be considered speculative. For more thoughts on the strategy and impact of symbolic wins for animals, see our full report on sentience legislation.

Therefore, we suggest that public interest litigation should either follow the strategy of 1) pushing directly for more near-term improvements in the lives of animals in industries or society which are not too cumbersome to achieve (but are still large and targeted welfare improvements) or 2) pushing for additional symbolic significant rights for all animals that are unlikely to be overturned, and later pushing for the material implications of these. Direct improvements may be more limited but will result in near-term implementation that we can have greater confidence in. While symbolic wins will have no immediate impact and may later be difficult to attribute change to.

In line with the prominence of public interest litigation in the public eye, the animal advocacy movement in India has focused very strongly on public interest litigation. In light of recent indications that public interest litigation is becoming less promising, we would not recommend that additional advocates prioritise this area of work given the current level of focus. However, we believe strategic direction could be a good use of existing expertise and it remains a useful tool in the right circumstances.

4.3. Movement building interventions

Across social movements the animal advocacy movement and concern for animals has existed in some form throughout history. India's history and culture has notable respect for animal sentience and non-injury toward all life (36). However, we should recognise that with the rise of industrial agriculture and the continued trend toward higher meat consumption (37,38) the conditions for animals are likely worse than they have been historically. The movement to move beyond broad respect and provide actionable protections for non-human animals is relatively young, and outside of dramatic shifts in the status quo, there are likely many more decades before large-scale reform is achieved. In such an environment, while the victories we can achieve for animals in the short run still have immense value, the long term trajectory and sustainability of the movement are also worthwhile investments. Many campaigns contribute in some way to this but there are also programs we can directly invest in for movement building.

Assessing these interventions requires direct understanding of the theory of change, program outcomes, and resources required. Importantly, it also requires an understanding of the movement at large, and effective approaches to advocacy given the cultural and political context. This helps set the direction for which areas of the movement need additional development. Research in both of these areas can be quite limited given the overall complexity of the task. and difficulty with assessing the long-term impact.

Given these constraints our work around movement building has examined a few areas for potential

improvement, but we expect subsequent research is needed into the above factors to provide a more careful analysis of specific areas in need of investment. Having said this, some areas were of particular interest and have been highlighted through our interviews with key stakeholders in the region.

One highlighted area was improving movement demographics. India is an incredibly diverse country with ~30 official languages, many states, and many ethnicities. A message that speaks to a Tamil might be very different from one that speaks to a Bengali. In particular, urban India is very different from rural India, and entirely different messages and asks might be needed for these different contexts. Wouters and Walgrave argue that demographic diversity is inherently helpful for an advocacy movement. Being seen as drawing from a broad spectrum of society legitimises the message (39) and provides access to different knowledge and perspectives. Interventions could include translation of Hindi articles and videos into other languages, broad outreach in under-represented areas (to get entirely new activists from different demographics) or targeted leadership outreach (to promote the best activists from underrepresented demographics). Though the impact of any given program would need to be evaluated before it could be recommended.

Beyond building diversity within the movement itself, coalitions across movements can extend the reach and legitimacy of advocacy work. The clearest near-term opportunity is alignment with farmer movements. Indian contract poultry farmers often work under exploitative terms, receiving as little as ₹6.5 per kilogram from integrators while bearing most of the capital and operational risk themselves. An ongoing strike of approximately 20,000 broiler farmers in Tamil Nadu seeking payment increases to ₹20 per kilogram (40) illustrates that the economic interests of small farmers and the welfare interests of farmed animals are not always opposed. Integrators, rather than farmers, are frequently the binding constraint on both. Advocates willing to support such mobilisations can build trust with constituencies the movement has historically struggled to reach, and similar logic extends to coalitions with human rights groups working on agricultural labour, environmental groups focused on water quality and antibiotic resistance, and public health actors concerned with antimicrobial use and food safety. Framing welfare problems in these broader terms also reduces the risk that advocacy reads as a narrow or culturally imposed concern, though advocates should be careful not to instrumentalise farmer or worker struggles for tactical gain.

If we have the broader movement available we still need specialised staff in key areas where leadership development and training programs can be effective. The number of people directly working in priority areas for animals in India is low and some interventions require specialised skills sets. Ensuring this work has the talent pipeline for people that have the technical, policy or campaigns skills to make real change is needed. Some people will emerge somewhat organically but the growth needed in the movement requires more highly competent staff. Some similar programs and courses exist to upskill animal advocates in relevant skillsets (e.g., Ahimsa, AAC policy fellowship) but ensuring these are targeted towards the current gaps in the movement is essential for them to stay relevant.

Outside of movement composition and skill sets, the structure and organisation of the movement's current resources can also affect its effectiveness. In previous research and from the broader literature, tactical diversity and tactical innovation are important for advocacy to remain effective. Different people respond to different tactics. Through diversity, the animal movement can mobilise people who wouldn’t have otherwise stood up for their beliefs, and can reach people who wouldn’t have otherwise heard about the issue. While innovation remains important as institutional targets adapt to previous tactics over time.

Finally, as briefly discussed with policy advocacy, ensuring the movement remains coordinated on its aims and composition of tactics and approaches can amplify the impact of different interventions. Without coordination there are risks of infighting, wasting movement resources fighting each other or investing in counter productive campaigns, duplicating, and causing reputational harm. In practice cultivating this dynamic is difficult and fragile and interventions to create it are often unclear. For example, creating spaces for discussion, dialogue and friendly debate such as conferences or strategic forums seems prudent but can often be insufficient if actors think they have irreconcilable philosophical and strategic differences. Broader movement dynamics can also work to penalise anti-cooperative organisations or incentivise cooperation but are more difficult for individual actors to change.

4.4. Research gaps in animal welfare science

Research is in itself an approach to advocacy. In some instances it may be sufficient to shift policy on its own and for others it serves as the foundation ensuring quality campaigns. During our research on this project we found a general lack of studies and data relevant to animal advocacy and animal welfare in India. This is consistent with a well-known general pattern of the global South being much less well studied than the global North in these and many other domains.

Of particular note during our research is the lack of primary studies into the welfare of important farmed animal species. The gap is most severe for farmed fish and aquatic species but is also present for Indian specific welfare concerns for all species. Due to the relative newness of their adoption to aquaculture, the evidence base is generally much weaker for aquatic species, even for species farmed in large quantities in the global North, such as trout. Species found predominantly in the global South tend to have significantly weaker evidence bases, even tilapia which has a weak but growing evidence base concerning welfare. For illustrative purposes only, here are the search results for google scholar for certain species:

Table 7: Illustrative search results for studies on the welfare of major farmed animal species in India and Europe

Species	Number (million)	Search term results on scholar
Species	Number (million)	"X" "Europe" "Welfare"	"X" "Welfare"
Chickens		147,000	764,000
Salmon		82,200	285,000
Sea bass		5,500	16,500
Sea bream		4,200	13,000
Species	Number (million)	Search term results on scholar
Species	Number (million)	"X" "India" "Welfare"	"X" "Welfare"
Chickens	851.81 (poultry birds are ~95% chickens)	91,400	764,000
*Catla (Gibelion catla***)	2,900	2,560	3,780
*Roho labeo (Labeo rohita***)	1,200	349	1,030
*Torpedo-shaped catfishes nei (Clarias spp.***)	770	163	361
*Silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix***)	650	1,360	3,760
*Striped catfish (Pangasianodon hypophthalmus***)	600	827	419
*Mrigal carp (Cirrhinus mrigala***)	530	1,420	377
Cow	~200	125,000	627,000
Buffalo	~100	98,100	485,000
Goat	~150	57,200	367,000
Black soldier fly	Many	1,060	4,550

While it is still possible to undertake interventions that will likely increase their welfare, such as improving water quality, the lack of evidence makes it difficult to identify and be confident in pivotal welfare reforms for many species in India. This is particularly true when it comes to policy advocacy or pushing for animal welfare reforms for these animals, because even if there is a reasonable presumption that certain intervention will increase welfare, lack of evidence can be used as an excuse for inaction.

Ensuring the development of a sufficient knowledge base to take action for these animals is essential for the long term impact of the movement. For the purpose of this report we have taken the existing research as a limitation on the areas we can confidently invest in; however, an ideal review here would also extend to potential areas for future development. This is an important gap that we think subsequent research into advocacy campaigns in India should develop further.

4.5. Exploratory informal market work

There are further research gaps for this very section itself when it comes to identifying approaches to advocacy. Given the unique context and difficulty for large institutions such as corporations and governments to influence behaviors in much of the market there are large gaps in our ability to institute effective change. Even some of the approaches listed above are relatively novel with welfare credits and farmer engagement still being experimented with to make change in rural informal markets.This may change over time as markets formalise and government effectiveness increases but this is not guaranteed and places much needed work as contingent on larger forces.

So while we cannot conclusively rule on many approaches to advocacy not included in this report, we don’t have sufficient evidence that they are ineffective either. These approaches and interventions lie in an exploratory phase where additional research and program development is needed before they can be adopted by the wider movement. Some examples of interventions we examined in earlier stages of this research, many of which will not be effective, include:

accelerating market formalisation;
improve traceability for informal vendors;
engagement with or establishing farmer producer organisations;
working with vendor associations;
product category advertising; and
litigation campaigns against producer integrators.

Litigation for example could involve threatening litigation against poultry integrators unless they agree to specified reforms. Unlike much of the Indian poultry sector which remains fragmented and informal, integrators represent the most centralized and visible actors in the industry. Their size, branding, and formal corporate structures make them more accessible targets for legal pressure than independent farmers operating outside formal regulatory frameworks. If litigation or threatening litigation was cheap enough for advocates, but a significant risk for these actors, it could be leveraged to force them to reform, even beyond the scope of potential litigation. However, the approach has not been tested from our knowledge and it’s unclear if this provides a credible enough legal threat to result in reform.

There will also be other examples or innovation that may be discovered over time. Given the nascent stage of the movement, exploration, rigorous testing and evaluation provide significant information value for subsequent work. It may well be possible that the most effective approach has not been developed yet so investment across exploratory interventions is needed. The primary value of these interventions is the information about their potential effectiveness not their direct impact at this time.

5. Tractable prominent issues

5.1. Introduction

The current landscape of total issues present for non-human animals is extensive. There are many different species affected and our routes for influencing their quality vary dramatically depending on how they are affected. Those in agriculture can be influenced through supply chains, regulation, and direct interaction with producers, while wild or liminal animals may be affected by regulations, interactions with humans, or direct programs providing care, vaccination, or contraception. Each individual is equally deserving of our consideration and attention but resources are limited meaning we need to triage to attend to the most critical tractable cases. This section outlines the results and methodology we employ using a systematic process to assess, sort, and prioritise potential issues to help guide strategic decision makers towards issues in most need of intervention.

5.2. Criteria for assessment

At each stage of our research process we are focused on assessing issue ideas based on the same criteria.

Potential impact

Total potential impact
- The total scale and intensity of the problem and which welfare threats or reforms have the greatest total potential impact. Issues that are smaller in scale may still be worth addressing if they perform well on other criteria but represent smaller potential investment in resources and thus importance for further research.
Target and/or intervention selection
- For each issue what interventions or actors can be influenced to help address the issue? Many issues while large scale are dispersed, restricting our ability to act at scale. This is represented either through potential campaign targets such as government, or private sectors institutions or direct intervention effect sizes.
Cost-effectiveness
- Given the interventions available, how cost-effectively could the issue be addressed?
Externalities
- Beyond the direct impact of addressing the issue, are there any flow through effects on other populations of animals, or significant outcomes such as bio-security, climate or livelihood effects? These can be both negative and positive.

Evidence

Strength of evidence
- Is the issue and potential interventions to resolve it supported by robust evidence. Areas with weaker evidence may result in failed or weaker interventions than expected.
Strong theory of change
- Potential interventions for addressing the issue have a clear well supported theory of change.

High probability of success

The relative importance of indicators for probability of success varies on the domain of intervention. With potential including, but not limited to, political feasibility, economic feasibility, and public support.

Counterfactual

Would this intervention lead to sustained changes compared to inaction? Would the problem be solved anyway?

Even within these criteria different stakeholders will vary in their ability to take action on specific issues. So, while our assessment should provide a guide towards interventions that perform best on these criteria, we encourage organisations to consider their comparative advantage and positioning in the movement alongside the information provided here.

5.2. Methodology

Given the scope of issues facing non-human animals and the wide variety of intervention options, the number of potential ideas are vast. Given this vast array, high investment in assessing each idea would be prohibitive. Instead for all areas of our research we aim to invest in improving our understanding of an area as far as it is decision relevant. As such our prioritisation process aims to efficiently narrow down from this possibility space to the areas with the most potential for impact. This is structured around needs assessment frameworks and combines both qualitative and quantitative data (41).

We achieve this through interactive research rounds. Beginning with a foundational list of extensive ideas we build upon for all our research projects and narrowing to ideas that perform best in a given context.

Phase I (Preassessment)
- Engagement with regional experts and campaign organisations to assess research needs, knowledge gaps, and provide contextual knowledge.
- Scoping: gathering regional and national data on broader social, economic, and political context.
- Idea Generation: combine historic idea lists with additional context specific ideas
Phase II (Assessment)
- Internal Check: examine the initial asks list and eliminate all extensively researched asks by running through the context of crucial considerations identified previously
- Initial Assessment: Sort out the top 25% of ideas using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methodologies including weighted factor model, impact assessment, expert opinions, and evidence review. Each methodology is applied to every idea independently by different researchers, returning together for an idea assessment meeting upon completion.
- Assessment: more in-depth assessment using the same methodology to determine the priority ideas for further examination in our full length report. At this stage we may split analysis between members of our team who have specialist knowledge in sub-domains.
Phase III (Post-assessment)
- Examination of priority areas in greater depth culminating in an external report on potential promising areas for intervention.

Throughout our process we engage with local experts and advocates to understand contextual factors that may influence the potential impact of probability of success for intervention areas.

5.3. Shrimp aquaculture

Shrimp farming involves several key stages of development across their life stages, as outlined in figure 1. At each stage of their lifespan they encounter a variety of threats to their welfare. Some threats, namely diseases, align clearly with industry interests and therefore typically have more effort to manage them in more intensive systems where farmers have greater resources. Whereas as the industry intensifies, stocking densities tend to increase further, falling outside of the natural habitat of shrimp (42).

For in-depth discussion with regards to global opportunities for shrimp welfare in aquaculture we highly recommend Mckay et al. (2023) (42) and (2024) (43) who are referenced extensively in this section, alongside the whole sequence on shrimp welfare from Rethink Priorities. Much of the discussion applies McKay et al's previous work examining global trends and issues in shrimp aquaculture to the Indian context. For example, Indian shrimp farm productivity and the sample from SWP scoping indicates there are likely fewer extensive farms than the global average (44).

5.3.1. Shrimp grow-out Improvements

Shrimp spend the majority of their lives at the grow-out stage on farms and thus encounter the most significant welfare harms over this duration, with 53% of them dying before reaching slaughter age (45).

McKay and McAuliffe (46) evaluated the welfare harms to shrimp in grow-out globally, finding that high stocking density, high un-ionized ammonia, and low dissolved oxygen are the areas of most concern for on-growing penaeid shrimp aquaculture. Their most robust findings are that chronic welfare threats which occur in grow-out outweigh short term harms such as those experienced in slaughter, transport, or for eye-stalk ablation of smaller broodstock populations.

Progress towards lower stocking densities and improved water quality are not only beneficial for shrimp welfare. They can improve shrimp immune function (47) leading to lower incidence of disease (48) which is beneficial for farmers and reduce reliance on antibiotic usage (49).

Overall from previous analysis it is clear that interventions at this stage have a large scope for total improvement per individual. Instead the main area for development is how to effectively engage with or influence farmers to change practices that can improve shrimp welfare. Thus far organisations like Sustainable Shrimp Farmers of India have focused on providing services, technical assistance and training for farmers, improving water quality and reducing stocking density, both vital for the welfare of these animals. There may also be scope to work with certifiers who already cover a large number of farms, more discussion on this is found below. Finally, engagement with retailers and consumers to shift demand and commit to purchasing from farms with improved practices may have scope for greater impact in the future, but at present these campaigns have focused on the most severe forms of suffering around slaughter and eye stalk ablation discussed in 5.3.2.

5.3.2. Shrimp humane slaughter

Within this context efforts to implement humane slaughter need to be achieved very cost-effectively compared to other welfare harms given its effects. While unfortunately this is likely to be difficult in India, especially when farmers control little market share and economies of scale to mitigate the capital costs of humane stunning. The large export market necessitates Indian producers and exporters to respond to the demands of consumers in the US and Europe.

Many large retailers in India's export markets have already made public commitments to using electrical stunning in their supply chains (Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's, Waitrose / John Lewis Partnership, Ocado, Albert Heijn, Jumbo, Co-op, Morrisons, Iceland, and Les Mousquetaires) (50), a list that is only likely to grow over the coming years.

Efforts from organisations in India should focus on working with producers who have greater market share or networks of farmers in the same region focused on export markets to Europe and the US. Existing work programs have shown directly supplying the stunners can be cost-effective given the producers are large enough. Ensuring connections to buying teams in retailers who have or are considering making commitments on this issue in Europe, potentially even offering advance market commitments would provide further incentive for local producers to invest in stunners. This will require international cooperation with organisations working in corporate engagement in Indian export markets.

If we look domestically for local retailer targets even within the small formal market there are likely to be retailers with sufficient volume of shrimp sales that commitments to stunning could be cost-effective, or more ambitiously purchase agreements directly with the Sustainable Shrimp Farmers of India. If attempted the main conflict in this area will be trading off progress on shrimp stunning commitments against potential cage-free work using the same channel. Although, work in Europe on this issue has been successful alongside ongoing work on cage-free and broiler welfare. In the UK for example, all major retailers have committed to this ask even while working on cage-free transitions and discussing broiler welfare reforms.

Table 8: Estimates for total number of shrimp sold at Indian retailers and value of acquiring these commitments

Company name	Company shrimp estimate	Bounty on commitment for humane stunning ($)
Total Retail Market	10,577,865,131	$40,684,097
Modern Retail	465,448,707	$1,790,187
Reliance Fresh	48,104,912	$185,019
D-Mart	43,477,070	$167,219
Patanjali	27,459,623	$105,614
Metro Cash & Carry	8,961,662	$34,468
Flipkart	8,395,389	$32,290
Vishal Mega Mart	7,042,421	$27,086
BigBasket	6,958,910	$26,765
Future Retail	5,193,728	$19,976

Full calculations can be found here, cost-effectiveness bar for commitment bounty is estimated based on SWP Humane Slaughter Initiative

5.3.3. Shrimp enhanced feeds

Shrimp in India are largely fed commercial feed. India has approximately 38 shrimp feed mills producing 1.3 million mt of shrimp feed per year (51). This industry is the most concentrated part of the Indian shrimp industry, with Avanti Feeds controlling a 50% market share and Avanti Feeds, CP Group, Deepak Nexgen, Devi Sea Foods, and Sandhya Marines collectively controlling a 80-85% market share (52). The remaining share is much more fragmented (53). Given a welfare relevant improvement can be identified at this stage of the supply chain it would be possible to work with a relatively small number of stakeholders to improve the welfare of most shrimp in India.

Feed quality and composition can also have significant effects on the welfare of farmed shrimp. Feeds can be supplemented with functional additives (probiotics, prebiotics, immunostimulants, phytogenics, etc.) that bolster shrimp health leading to better health outcomes and increased disease survival rates (54–56). A notable example is supplementation with pre-biotic in Ecuador leading to increased survival rates from 37.5% in the control to 70.3% with mannan-oligosaccharide over a 60 day period (57). Overall, in a meta-analysis Toledo et al (2019) (58) show that probiotics can raise shrimp survival by up to ~95% relative to untreated controls. The best results from trials occurred in higher stocking densities (>500 animals per m³) and shorter trials (<30 days) (58).

Given the limits of this report we have not been able to fully scope which enhancements would be most impactful and subsequent research and development is needed here. However, it is notable in that this is an area of great interest given its potential to effect a large number of shrimp across a large portion of their lives by working with very few actors. Also, unfortunately, feed is the main expense for farmers at around 50-60% of costs (52), so it may be difficult to convince them to spend more for higher quality feed.

5.3.4. Future enforcement for certification schemes through investigative field research

As of 2025 certification schemes cover an estimated 24.5% of India’s production, of which 85.54% are BAP certified, 10.3% ASC certified and 4.36% FTUSA (59). ASC and BAP both prohibit shrimp eyestalk ablation (60) but at present have largely focused on environmental, disease ,and social issues in shrimp farming. ASC standards do require slaughter by immersion in an ice slurry bath or through an electrical device followed by immersion in an ice slurry bath (61), but ASC standards still have significant issues. They allow mortality rates up to 75%, shrimp being left unfed, and non-permanently aerated ponds (61). Current shrimp welfare standards on ASC farms are still likely to be better than the average for the industry but they are not strong enough to confer significant protections for shrimp welfare.

International groups like Aquatic Life Institute, Albert Schweitzer Foundation, World Wildlife Fund (WWF), and Compassion in World Farming (CIWF) (62) all engage with certifiers to help improve standards for the industry. So one might hope that these protections become stronger over time. For a cooperative approach, local advocates could work with these organisations to respond to calls for evidence when schemes are reviewing standards.

Even if standards improve there is no guarantee farms will remain in compliance. Inspection frequency is fairly good across schemes, usually once a year, sometimes unannounced, but even still there are prominent instances of widespread non-compliance (63). While limited we see this from the available literature. In a sample of Bangladesg is still in the early adoption phase ihi pangasius farmers, Haque et al. 2021 (64) found that out of 57 indicators, only 35% were met by the farmers at the best and good level. Leepaisomboon et al. 2011 (65) ran a similar study for GLOBALG.A.P. certified shrimp in Thailand, and found that the farms complied with only half of the criteria.

Fortunately the movement has tools at its disposal for uncovering and reducing instances of non-compliance: investigative field research. Conducting investigative field research on certified shrimp farms would likely uncover instances of non-compliance. These could then be used to work with certified shrimp farms to improve the enforcement systems of international certifiers. Public release of these may even be unnecessary when cooperative reforms could be implemented based on the certifiers own concern while preserving the option of escalation to the media or regulators if needed.

5.4. Fin-fish aquaculture

As outlined in section 2.2.2, fin-fish farming is largely extensive or semi-intensive and ownership of these farms is also fragmented. The variety of farmed species and lack of existing welfare focused research means there is much less to draw on to understand the varied needs and improvements appropriate for even the main species of farmed fish. This means while the overall importance of fish welfare and suffering present in the aquaculture industry in India should not be understated, actually identifying tractable evidenced based interventions, which are well leveraged to affect large populations of fish, is difficult. A significant amount of work in this area is exploratory, building the knowledge base needed to identify cost-effective scalable interventions, rather than being immediately cost-effective.

From our current understanding of welfare issues present in the major farmed species, most suffering is present in the grow-out stage. Fish spend the majority of their lifespan here, largely in earthen ponds. While transport and slaughter represent some of the most acute stressors they are relatively brief compared to their much longer lifespan spent in grow-out (see Figure 6).

5.4.1. Fish grow-out improvements

Indian aquaculture confronts fin-fish with a wide variety of welfare harms during grow-out. Potential improvements could be made to feed and nutrition, water quality, stocking density, disease and parasites and predation (66). While these can be examined in isolation all of these factors interact, improving feeding (67) and reducing stocking densities can both improve water quality (68). Fish welfare needs to be considered as part of an all-inclusive mode of operation in a drive towards sustainable aquaculture production that accounts for fish, human, and environmental health (69,70).

Water quality is a leading example of this. Water quality parameters have profound effects on fish physiology, metabolism and behaviors (71). Ensuring good water quality improves fish survival, growth, and mitigates the risk of disease (72). The best water quality data available is from the Alliance for Responsible Aquaculture data collection program (73). Their daily farm data shows that dissolved oxygen is outside of ideal ranges 12.2% of the time, PH 5.9%, Ammonia (NH3 (mg/L)) 2.6%, and temperature 16.3% of the time (74). While their continuous water quality data shows DO below 3mg 21.5% of the time, pH out of required ranges 53.6% of the time and temperature only 0.2% of the time (75,76). Although, temperature is likely lower as the continuous data set is between November and January the coldest months of the year. From the daily data we can also observe that even on ARA farms which adhere to stocking density requirements 5.7% of farms were outside of acceptable densities, something that is likely to be higher on non-member farms.

Disease is also rampant. In a survey of small-scale carp farms in Bangladesh 46.8% of the farms experienced a disease outbreak across the year with an average mortality level of 10.23% (77). Sahoo et al, 2020 (78) surveillanced Indian freshwater aquaculture farms for disease. Parasitic diseases were found to be the major contributor accounting for 74.88% cases, followed by bacterial diseases of 12.79%, mixed bacterial and parasitic diseases of 10.50%, and viral diseases of 1.83%. Another investigation into parasite load in Catla, Rui and Mrigal farming in Bangladesh found 51.7% of fish sampled from farms had ecto-parasites and averaged 16.96 per fish (79). Although, from a sample of Indian major carps in extensive culture systems of Andhra Pradesh, incidences of myxosporidians, skin fluke, and gill fluke were found in 21.4%, 32.8% and 26.03% of fish respectively (80). While these diseases represent a significant welfare and productivity risk, direct treatment is not always the most effective method for risk mitigation; other factors like lower stocking density and better water quality can provide long-term protection.

Losses to predators are also common. This harms farmers' profitability. Fish then need to be farmed in great numbers to offset these losses, and those who are consumed live might remain alive 15 to 25 minutes from suffocation and stomach acid (81). Although figures are not available in India, researchers have found that farmers may lose approximately 15% of their production to piscivorous birds in similar inland freshwater aquaculture systems in Kenya (82). These predators can also act as vectors for pathogens between ponds (83).

Current farming conditions leave large room for improvement across many parameters, all having significant effects on fish, farmer, and environmental health.

5.4.2. Fish hatchery welfare

While grow-out represents the majority of farmed fish lifespan, many fish often die at earlier life stages. In a sample of 20 nursery farmers, Fish Welfare Initiative found mean survival rates of just 27%, varying from as high as 70% to as low as 10% (84). This variability suggests that large improvements are possible in the hatcheries with higher mortality.

Disease is unfortunately relatively common. A study in Bangladesh (which may be illustrative but not conclusive for India) found that 67.8% of Bangladesh hatchies and nurseries mentioned that they encountered diseases in their farms (85), including white spot, tail and fin rot, sudden spawn mortality and fish lice. Both conditions, such as water quality (86), and quality brood stock can have material outcomes on survival. There are potentially problems with inbreeding which leads to lower quality seed (87,88).

In some fish species, conditions at earlier life stages also have the potential to have knock-on effects across the animals lifespan as weak or diseased fry may not develop as well (89). This is biologically plausible, though to our knowledge not yet demonstrated in Indian aquaculture species.This makes interventions at an early stage of greater interest than the duration and severity of welfare harms would initially suggest.

There is a strong prima facie case for hatchery namely the relatively high facility concentration. There are more than 3,000 carp hatcheries in India, with additional hatcheries for other species (90). While significantly higher than the number of shrimp hatcheries, this still represents a leveraged way of improving the lives of many fish that are otherwise farmed in a dispersed way and are harder to affect.

Additionally, greater government involvement in hatcheries may bring avenues for change. Current hatchery guidelines for accredited hatcheries are that fewer than 5% of fry must be inactive and fewer than 1% must have deformities, as well as requirements for reducing disease prevalence and maintaining water quality (90). While accreditation is voluntary for freshwater hatcheries, the accreditation itself is a marker of quality and might come with other benefits. This means that the Indian Department of Fisheries itself could be worked with to improve the standards.Taken together, the higher facility concentration, extreme mortality rates, and potential lifelong knock-on, are promising notes about this intervention. Though only on the assumption hatcheries can be effectively influenced and a strong invention for improving welfare can be found. There are likely to be improvements that can be made at these earlier life stages but which interventions can be reliably deployed and scaled is unclear. Existing evidence is very limited, with even the broad potential importance of the area largely relying on generalising from other species in the same class and regional neighbours.

Having said this, one point of suggestive evidence that could be examined further is Sarma et al. (91), which finds a large increase in fish growth and survival in Rohu fry through vitamin and mineral supplementation in feed, which also increased hatchery production and profitability. Though we should note here that one side effect of hatchery work that should be watched for is increasing the productivity of hatcheries, leading to more fish suffering and dying.

5.4.3. Fish enhanced feeds

Supplementary feed makes up the majority of the operational costs for fingerling rearing (92) and a large proportion of on-growing costs for semi-intensive and intensive farmers (93). This drives farmers towards alternatives, resulting in mash feeds being the predominant feed for fish in India. Mash feeds are most commonly made of deo-oiled rice bran, groundnut cake or cotton seed cake (94,95). Commercially manufactured pellet feeds are used by 33% of the farmers to complement their mash feeds (94). Additionally, more extensive farms rely more on fertilisation to provide forage for the fish.

Mash feeds are generally considered lower quality and can result in worse feed conversion ratios and growth rates. However, several trials indicate that the use of mash, pellet or sinking feeds have no significant effect on water quality (96–98). Fish Welfare Initiative, an India based fish welfare non-profit, found similar results in their 2024 trial with no significant water quality differences between mash, fortified, and commercial feed though growth rates were higher for the fortified feed (99).

It is likely feed wastage is worse in commercial settings compared to these trials, and this is the primary mechanism for water quality deterioration (100). (94). Most farmers in Andhra Pradesh use a rope and bag feeding technique, which they believe reduces food wastage and subsequent water quality deterioration. Though farmers are mostly unsure of how much food wastage there is with this system, and it cannot yet be claimed to provide a substantial solution to this problem (94). Though perhaps this be studied further as one mechanism for reducing feed waste.

Solid mash feeds such as rice-bran can be improved through extrusion (101). This involves processing via mixing, preconditioning with steam and other liquids, cooking and conditioning the mash, and finally shaped using an extruder (102). This generally improves feed quality characteristics such as higher water stability, fecal durability, and lower phosphorus discharge (103) and can lead to better growth rates for tilapia, grass carp, and gibel carp (104–107). As with other forms of enhanced feeds this could potentially lead to higher fish welfare through improved water quality or direct health benefits for the fish, although existing evidence is inconclusive. While this intervention would be beneficial, because fish farmers use mash to save on costs, extrusion of mash would have to be cost effective to reach most farmers, and lack of access to extruders might be a stumbling point for reaching more remote farmers.

5.4.4. Fish slaughter

Harvest and slaughter makes up a very small proportion of fin-fish overall lifespan so the relative duration of suffering at this stage is quite small. However, a large fraction of this is likely to be acute excruciating pain that while short in duration may be severe enough for some individuals to prioritise (108). For this reason we think it is worth considering none the less.

Most fish in India are currently slaughtered through air asphyxiation in the process of harvesting, this can take several hours. In a trial average time, until visual cessation of indicators of consciousness became clear, it had taken 51 minutes for air asphyxiation (109). Though visual indicators alone cannot be relied upon as an accurate measure of consciousness (110). Asphyxiation in air is widely recognized as an inhumane slaughter method across multiple aquaculture species (110).

While there is consensus that air asphyxiation is inadequate, different fin-fish species cannot reliably be humanely killed using the same method. Variations in body size and structure mean a method that renders one species insensible may be entirely ineffective for another. Context also matters as many methods of slaughter require continuous electricity or trained consistent labour, something not always available on a rural Indian aquaculture farm. Evidence-based humane alternatives need to be developed for each farmed fin-fish species that can be implemented in the Indian context.

Unfortunately there are no direct trials comparing ideal humane stunning methods for the most common farmed species in India. When these do occur they will need to be validated in commercial settings before widespread adoption. Still, given how inhumane asphyxiation is, it is possible that even options like chill kill could offer some welfare improvement, as indicated by the reduced time to loss of visual indicators of consciousness (109).