A plan by a multinational company to build world’s first octopus farm to breed the animals for consumption is facing flak, said a BBC report. Octopuses which are consumed in Europe, Asia, Latin America and other regions of the world have not been farmed before. The report says a Spanish multinational company Nueva Pescanova plans to build an octopus farm.
Octopuses are notoriously hard to breed in captivity as the larvae only eat live food and need very careful monitoring of environmental factors. Efforts to try to breed octopuses have been going on for decades. Neuva Pescanova claimed in 2019 that it had had a breakthrough in developing method to breed octopuses in captivity.
Some scientists quoted by the BBC have raised concerns that the proposed method to kill the octopuses was “cruel”
Nueva Pescanova denies that the octopuses will suffer. The company plans to build the farm in Spain’s Canary Islands.
As per the report, the plan to breed the animals involves creating 1000 communal breeding tanks which will be kept in dark as well as exposed to light time to time. The octopuses will be slaughtered by keeping them in water at -3 degrees Celsius.
“to kill them with ice would be a slow death … it would be very cruel and should not be allowed,” said Prof Peter Tse, a cognitive neuroscientist at Dartmouth University. Professor Tse was quoted by the BBC.
The professor said that octopuses were “as intelligent as cats” and more humane methods should be used if they are to be slaughtered for the purpose of being consumed.
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