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Invertebrate sentience and sustainable seafood

Nature Food volume 3, pages 884–886 (2022)Cite this article

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Octopuses, crabs and lobsters are probably sentient, yet their welfare needs are poorly protected in the food system. Upholding animal welfare in the seafood industry presents challenges, and more research is needed to address humane capture, housing and slaughter.

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Fig. 1: Decapod crustaceans and cephalopod molluscs.

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Acknowledgements

This research is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme, grant no. 851145. The review of evidence of sentience also received funding from the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), project code AW0517.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

    Andrew Crump, Heather Browning & Jonathan Birch

  2. Department of Philosophy, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

    Heather Browning

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Alexandra K. Schnell

  4. Animal Welfare Science and Ethics, Royal Veterinary College, London, UK

    Charlotte Burn

Authors
  1. Andrew Crump
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  2. Heather Browning
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  3. Alexandra K. Schnell
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  4. Charlotte Burn
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  5. Jonathan Birch
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Correspondence to Jonathan Birch.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Nature Food thanks the anonymous reviewers for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Crump, A., Browning, H., Schnell, A.K. et al. Invertebrate sentience and sustainable seafood. Nat Food 3, 884–886 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00632-6

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