No, the Model Seafood Welfare Standard is not a certification scheme and does not require audits, logos, or licensing fees. The MSWS is for seafood what the Better Chicken Commitment is for chicken, and what cage-free egg policy language is for egg-laying hens: model sourcing policy language that food companies can use to ensure animal welfare in their seafood supply chain.

The MSWS aligns closely with the animal welfare requirements of the Aquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC), RSPCA Assured, Naturland, Global Animal Partnership, and Certified Humane. Producers certified by any of these five certification schemes are considered to meet all standards of the MSWS (other than the humane slaughter standard in the case of ASC certified crustacean producers), making it even easier for food companies to audit their suppliers against the Standard. However, there is no need or requirement for a producer to be certified by these or any other certifier in order to meet the MSWS. Suppliers simply need to follow the basic animal welfare parameters described in the Standard.

The MSWS was developed collaboratively with the input and consultation of, and is endorsed by, leading animal welfare organisations working on fish and crustacean welfare, including:

RSPCA, Eurogroup for Animals, World Animal Protection, The Humane League, Albert Schweitzer Foundation, Fish Welfare Initiative, Shrimp Welfare Project, Crustacean Compassion, Ethical Seafood Research, Lever Foundation.

The goal of the MSWS is to align expertise across NGOs and create model policy language that covers key welfare issues which all organizations view as important for food companies to address. The SeafoodWelfare.org website is maintained by Lever Foundation.

Seafood is one of the most significant animal protein sources globally, both in terms of scale and impact. Farmed aquatic animals outnumber farmed land animals by a wide margin. Over 130 billion farmed finfish and 440 billion farmed crustaceans are raised and killed for food each year, in addition to an estimated 1 to 2 trillion wild-caught finfish and crustaceans. Given the vast number of animals involved, addressing the welfare of aquatic animals is critical for any
company that aims to ensure animal welfare in its supply chain. Improvements in areas such as water quality, disease, stocking density, capture, and slaughter significantly reduce the suffering of a massive number of individual animals, while also driving reductions in carbon emissions and having other environmental benefits.

The Model Seafood Welfare Standard focuses on the areas where the most severe and widespread welfare risks occur in seafood supply chains. These include water quality, disease and mortality management, environmental conditions such as stocking density, handling practices, mutilations, and humane stunning and slaughter. Each of these factors has a direct and measurable impact on animal suffering, survival rates, and production outcomes.

Importantly, the MSWS does not simply identify these risks. It embeds clear, science-based policy requirements that address them. By integrating established best practices into procurement and sourcing decisions, the MSWS provides companies with a practical framework to prevent avoidable suffering, reduce mortality, and improve overall production efficiency.

These same areas also overlap strongly with key ESG priorities, including resource efficiency and GHG emissions reductions. High disease and mortality rates and suboptimal environmental conditions substantially increase waste and GHG emissions. Addressing these issues therefore delivers not only animal welfare improvements but also environmental benefits and reputational risk management.

The MSWS applies to farmed fish and crustaceans broadly and does not prioritize certain species.

While the MSWS covers both farmed and wild-caught seafood, farmed seafood is the area with the greatest animal welfare impacts and also the area easiest to address from a supply chain management perspective. Therefore companies considering seafood welfare for the first time are encouraged to first set a policy standard for their farmed seafood supply chain before turning to their wild-caught seafood supply chain.

The first step for food companies is to add the MSWS or similar policy language into their existing animal welfare or seafood sourcing policy. Setting a timebound goal for your suppliers to meet the standards of the MSWS establishes clear company expectations, and it ensures that seafood welfare requirements are formally embedded alongside other animal welfare and ESG policy goals.

Once a policy is in place, the second step is to communicate these requirements to suppliers. This includes setting clear expectations for the key areas covered in the MSWS such as water quality monitoring, mortality tracking, humane stunning, handling practices, and environmental conditions. Providing clarity at the outset helps suppliers understand what is required and how compliance will be assessed. Setting a timebound implementation goal that allows suppliers sufficient time to adapt practices and upgrade equipment where necessary will help ensure that progress is made.

Supplier progress can be monitored either through certification schemes or through third-party auditing. Suppliers may choose to get certified by an existing animal welfare certification scheme, namely ASC, RSPCA Assured, Global Animal Partnership, Naturland or Certified Humane, to demonstrate alignment with MSWS requirements. Alternatively, suppliers can demonstrate compliance by adopting the technical requirements of the MSWS and arranging verification by any general third-party auditor.

Lever Foundation, which maintains the SeafoodWelfare.org website, supports both food companies and producers throughout this process at no cost, including policy development, supplier engagement, benchmarking, and implementation guidance.

No. The MSWS is not dependent on certification, and suppliers do not need to be certified to demonstrate compliance.

Companies can choose different approaches to ensure alignment with the MSWS. Some use existing animal welfare certification schemes, namely ASC, RSPCA Assured, Global Animal Partnership, Naturland or Certified Humane, as a practical way to verify that suppliers meet key welfare requirements. Certifications can provide an efficient and credible mechanism for demonstrating compliance.

Alternatively, suppliers can demonstrate compliance by adopting the technical requirements of the MSWS and arranging verification by any general third party auditor. This flexible approach makes it easier for both companies and their suppliers to ensure seafood welfare in their supply chain.

Lever Foundation provides comprehensive support to companies implementing the Model Seafood Welfare Standard at no cost. This includes access to supplier directories that identify producers already aligned with the MSWS requirements, as well as assistance with drafting new seafood welfare policies or reviewing and strengthening existing ones.

Lever Foundation, which maintains the SeafoodWelfare.org website, also conducts gap analyses to help companies understand how their current policies compare with the MSWS and where improvements can be made. In addition, companies receive benchmarking insights to understand how their approach compares with industry peers, along with direct free support to their seafood suppliers when desired. This support is designed to help companies implement the MSWS efficiently and effectively across their supply chain.

Eyestalk ablation is a practice used in shrimp aquaculture in which one or both eyestalks of a female shrimp are intentionally removed or damaged, typically through cutting, crushing, or cauterisation. This procedure disrupts the shrimp’s hormonal system, which regulates reproduction, and is used to induce egg production and increase breeding frequency.

Scientific evidence has shown that eyestalk ablation causes significant welfare harms, including pain, physiological stress, immune suppression, and increased mortality. The procedure interferes with normal biological functions and can negatively affect both health and survival.

Humane slaughter methods are those that render the animal immediately unconscious (unconscious within one to two seconds) prior to slaughter, cutting or bleeding, so that they do not experience prolonged suffering.

In seafood production, electrical stunning and mechanical/percussive stunning are the only methods that can deliver humane slaughter.

Electrical stunning uses a controlled electrical current to induce rapid unconsciousness, followed by death while the animal remains insensible. Mechanical stunning, often referred to as percussive stunning, uses a precisely applied physical impact to the head to achieve the same outcome. Both electrical and mechanical/percussive stunning must be applied carefully with appropriate parameters and controls to ensure that animals are correctly stunned and to ensure they are killed before regaining consciousness.

All seafood species, including both finfish and crustaceans, can be killed via electrical or mechanical/percussive stunning. These methods are increasingly common in farmed seafood operations, and hundreds of wild-catch fishing vessels now also use humane electrical or mechanical/percussive stunning techniques.

A growing body of academic and field research makes clear that electrical stunning, particularly properly implemented in-water stunning, is the most humane method for stunning and slaughtering shrimp. Effective electrical stunning renders shrimp insensible within seconds, minimizing suffering. In contrast, methods such as ice slurry or freezing can leave animals conscious for several minutes to tens of minutes as they slower suffer to death or insensibility in the cold. For more on this topic, please see this short white paper: Summary of Academic and Field Research on the Humane Slaughter of Shrimp.

Improving animal welfare in aquaculture, particularly by reducing disease and mortality and improving environmental conditions, very significantly lowers overall carbon emissions per kg of harvested seafood. Farms that improve animal welfare by lowering disease and mortality rates can have up to 30% lower CO₂ emissions per kg of product produced. For more on this topic, please see this short white paper: The Environmental Cost of Aquaculture Mortality.

The MSWS is aligned with and recognizes certification programs that incorporate meaningful animal welfare requirements as part of their standard. As noted on the SeafoodWelfare.org, for farmed seafood production the most steps for improving animal welfare are improved water quality, reduced disease rates, lower mortality, improved environmental conditions, and humane slaughter.

Generally speaking, these five standards—ASC, RSCPA, Global Animal Partnership, Naturland and Certified Humane—have supplier requirements that cover each of these key animal welfare areas. There is certainly variation between these standards, and some certification programs are stronger than others in certain regards. For example ASC is significantly weaker than the other four when it comes to requiring improved environmental conditions (through steps such as limiting stocking density, requiring enrichments, and so forth). However ASC is strong in other areas, for example it is particularly strong regarding animal protein levels in feed inputs, which significantly benefits animal welfare. Therefore, suppliers certified by any of these standards are viewed as meeting the Model Seafood Welfare Standard. (With one notable exception: ASC does not yet require humane slaughter for crustaceans, so ASC-certified crustacean suppliers should be checked to make sure they are using humane electrical stunning.)

Currently no wild-catch seafood certification programs include meaningful animal welfare parameters.

GlobalGAP and Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) certifications have a range of requirements related to food safety, environmental management, and traceability. However these certification programs do not cover animal welfare in any meaningful way, and almost none of the key seafood welfare issues are addressed by these certification programs. Neither GlobalGAP nor BAP have mandatory requirements on limiting disease, limiting mortality, or ensuring appropriate environments. Neither have sufficiently robust water quality monitoring standards, and neither have clear humane stunning requirements for all seafood. (The sole exception is that BAP does require humane slaughter for fish and prohibits eyestalk ablation in shrimp, which is positive, but overall minor relative to the animal welfare protections required by other certification programs.)

For more information on this topic, please see this white paper: Animal Welfare Risk Matrices for Key Seafood Certification Programs

MSC and Fisheries Improvement Project (FIP) certifications include a range of requirements related to food safety, environmental management, and traceability. However these certification programs currently include no requirements regarding the key animal welfare issues present with wild-catch seafood production. They place no limits on producers in using the cruelest production practices.

The Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative (GSSI) is a benchmarking platform that evaluates seafood certification programs against recognized guidelines on environmental sustainability, governance, and traceability. The GSSI has no requirements related to animal welfare.

As a result, being recognized by GSSI is a sign that a seafood certification program has clear environmental, governance, and traceability standards, but it does not suggest that the certification program covers animal welfare. In fact, most GSSI-recognized seafood certification programs have no animal welfare requirements whatsoever, and place no limits on producers in using the cruellest production practices.

More information can be found in the Model Seafood Welfare Standard A Science-Based Approach to Fish and Crustacean Welfare.