Spain will be a pioneer in the creation of the world’s first octopus farm. It is expected that in the summer of 2022 it will come true with the goal of being commercialized and sold as food in 2023, although many experts have already shown their outrage that they consider that these creatures are capable of feeling pain and emotions.
The Spanish company Nueva Pescanova will be based near the port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where it is planned that 3,000 tons of octopus will be produced per year. This would help, according to the company, that so many wild octopuses are not caught.
Nueva Pescanova would have refused to reveal details about the conditions in which these invertebrate cephalopods will be kept, such as the size of the tanks, the diet they will have and how they will be killed, as reported by the BBC.
The news has caused some controversy among the scientific community. For them, octopuses, which are capable of living up to four years, should never be raised to be marketed as food. “They are loners and very intelligent, so putting them in tanks without cognitive stimulation is bad for them,” said Dr. Lara, research director of the Compassion in World Farming group.
In numerous experiments it has been shown that octopuses have a very high level of intelligence. In them they have been observed how they use seashells to hide and defend themselves, in addition to showing that they can quickly learn the established tasks. For many experts, octopuses are “sentient beings who can experience pleasure, excitement and joy, but also pain, anguish and harm.
According to Stacey Tonkin, keeper of the Bristol Aquarium, one of the octopuses she cares for has symptoms that anyone can express and whose color changes with their mood. “When he’s orange-brown, that’s when he’s active or playful,” says Tonkin to the BBC.
Currently, about a third of the fish caught worldwide is turned into food for other animals, and about half of that amount goes to aquaculture. For all this, Nueva Pescanova assures that it is “firmly committed to aquaculture as a method to reduce pressure on fisheries and guarantee sustainable, safe, healthy and controlled resources, complementing fishing”.
Nueva Pescanova opens the leading private aquaculture center in Spain
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