A report by the association Ciwf tallies the environmental, economic and ethical costs of the world's first octopus farm and, more broadly, of carnivorous aquaculture.

What would be the impact of an octopus farm like the one being trialled in the Canary Islands — the first of its kind in the world — by the Spanish seafood company Nueva Pescanova? According to the report The growing threat of carnivorous aquaculture by Compassion in World Farming (Ciwf), the repercussions for marine ecosystems would be disastrous, as would those for animal welfare and food security.

The document reveals how — although it is often presented as a solution to the growing demand for seafood — carnivorous aquaculture, meaning the farming of aquatic species that depend on animal-based feed for their sustenance, is placing wild fish stocks, already overexploited, under unsustainable pressure. A problem that the continued expansion of these operations only makes worse.

According to the report, the world's first octopus farm could require up to 28,000 tonnes of wild fish in a single year from the very start of its operations, in order to produce just 3,000 tonnes of octopus meat. This would be equivalent to around two billion fish used to produce feed — a figure that could reach the staggering number of seven billion by 2040.

Furthermore, the feed for farmed fish and octopuses would be produced by exploiting fishing areas in West Africa, South America and South-East Asia, seriously endangering the food and economic supply of local communities.

The third aspect to consider is the ethical one: Ciwf has released new undercover footage showing the cruel slaughter method that Nueva Pescanova intends to use at its first octopus farm in Gran Canaria, Spain. The footage shows wild-caught octopuses enduring a slow and agonising death, forcibly submerged in a mixture of water and ice, in which they take at least ten minutes to die. It is also worth bearing in mind that octopuses are highly intelligent and extraordinarily complex animals, that have always lived freely and are solitary by nature.

"Carnivorous aquaculture is often marketed as a quick fix for food security when, in reality, it does nothing but undermine it," said Elena Lara, Senior Research and Policy Adviser at Ciwf. "Its expansion into octopus farming would plunder the food resources of coastal communities in the Global South, taking food away from people who truly need it in order to feed private profit and luxury markets instead. Moreover, our footage makes starkly clear what we have always maintained: there simply is no method of slaughtering farmed octopuses that is not cruel. We must act now to ensure that octopuses remain wild, to protect our oceans and food security."

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Ciwf is urging policymakers to sign up to a new global commitment called "Keep Them Wild", to express their support for a ban on octopus farming and to halt the unsustainable expansion of carnivorous aquaculture. In Europe, 78 additional species have been introduced into farming since 1985, of which 70 per cent depend on animal-based feed, and carnivorous aquaculture in the EU is projected to grow by 30 per cent by 2040. Within the European context, Norway is the leading fish producer, followed by the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and Denmark. These countries are also among the main exporters of fishmeal and fish oil, alongside the Netherlands. Italy is currently the third European country, after Spain and the United Kingdom, in terms of aquaculture growth.