The Animal Welfare Implications of Cetacean Deaths in Fisheries

prohibits the infliction of deliberate suffering and causing inhumane death,
including by drowning, it does not address suffering caused as an incidental
consequence of a lawful activity.
8. Animal welfare standards such as for the slaughter of farm animals and catching
wild mammals in killing traps specify times to death that are significantly shorter
than those predicted for bycaught cetaceans.
9. Mammal trapping standards provide a trauma scale to rank the injuries an
individual suffers in a restraining trap; this provides a quantified framework for
assessing the welfare consequences of different injuries that can form the basis
for a trauma scale for that can be applied to bycaught cetaceans.
10. In conclusion, bycaught cetaceans often endure a range of poor welfare
conditions, suffering injuries and/or a prolonged death due to asphyxiation, and
their death may result in distress to surviving family or group members and
disruption of social systems. Current legislation in the EU and elsewhere
pertaining to fisheries in general, and cetacean bycatch in particular, fails to
consider animal welfare in these circumstances, even though the duration of
suffering of bycaught cetaceans is likely to be substantially longer than that
accepted for trapping or commercial meat production.
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