Humane Harvesting Initiative: The Influence of Humane Harvesting on Fish Quality, Nutritional Value and Safety

Recently, fish welfare particularly during pre-slaughtering and slaughtering procedures is become prominent in fishery and seafood industry. The response to stress starts in the brain and is followed by biochemical changes in the blood and subsequent behavioral changes. There are differences between fish welfare in aquaculture and fisheries. In aquaculture, the welfare could be controlled by managing the crowding, feeding, handling, disease, transportation, drug administration, water quality, temperature fluctuations, harvesting or slaughtering. However, in case of fisheries, the welfare is associated with pre-harvesting (pre-slaughtering) and slaughtering procedures. Stressful conditions result in biochemical changes in plasma followed by the texture and nutritional value changes in. Due to stress, the physical movement of muscles will be increased, the energy sources (mainly adenosine triphosphate (ATP)) are depleted, and lactic acid in muscles increased which can drop the post mortem pH levels in muscle. In addition, there is a relationship between fish welfare and food safety risk for consumers. Due to the stress, the intestinal microflora change, which the pathogenic bacteria can be colonized which the safety of the final products can be influenced. Understanding the biochemical and physical changes during the fish harvesting and slaughtering can provide this opportunity for industry to control the stressful conditions to provide high quality seafood products with higher nutritional value and safer product. In this review, the effect of stress on fish quality, nutritional value and safety are presented.