Hey there,

We hope you’ve been well. This edition includes news of our first (successful) corporate trial run, results from our recent n=505 farmer survey, and more.

As it’s the last week of the second quarter, our team is busy finishing off some final goals for this quarter as well as planning new ones for the next. And after a six-month pause in onboarding new farms, in Q3 we’re (ambitiously) aiming to add an additional 50 farms, thanks largely to the improved recruitment methods we’ve been planning.

More on all this, and our reasoning behind it, in future editions!

The Significance of Our First Successful Corporate Trial Run

Recently, we completed something we had been aiming to achieve for about a year now: A successful corporate/farmer market linkage. This means that we facilitated one of our partner ARA farms selling to a corporation (instead of the usual middlemen). It has taken us lots of hard work—and multiple failed attempts—to get to this point.

Why this is significant: Most Indian fish farmers currently sell their fish through several layers of middlemen before they reach the end consumer. The challenge with these complex and decentralized supply chains is that there’s no public-facing entity (e.g. corporation) that can be lobbied to improve conditions, and thus even if consumers demanded better conditions there’s no party whom they could reasonably approach to improve them.

A shift to greater corporate procurement could improve this situation. For instance, in many countries, the animal advocacy movement has already had huge success in getting corporations to commit to improved practices, practices which they can then mandate at scale from their supplier farms. Similarly, we’re hopeful that corporations in India will also be better equipped to mandate improved practices (Captain Fresh, the corporation whom we partnered with for the trial run, has indicated interest already). 

Where we’re going from here: Over the next year, we'll facilitate “procurement” dialogues between corporations and farmers. If these are successful, we will then work more with corporations to influence and improve their procurement standards.

Corporate work will probably never fully replace farmer work in India—if for no other reason than corporations still amount to a small share of the total fish procurement—but we hope it will be a significant factor in incentivizing farmer transitions.

505 Farmers Surveyed

We recently surveyed 505 fish farmers in Andhra Pradesh to better understand current practices. Some of the main findings were:

• 62% of farmers surveyed indicated some understanding of the importance of animal welfare for fishes.
• Farmers significantly value water quality testing (implication: this is our current main incentive, and it seems to be a good one).
• Farmers were interested in decreasing their dependence on middlemen and gaining market price access (implication: these are promising future incentives).
• Feeding practices vary significantly amongst farmers (implication: this will be an added challenge for our Version 2 Standard's focus on improving these practices).

Other Organizational Updates

In our Alliance for Responsible Aquaculture:

• We've largely continued focusing on hiring and internal operational improvements to prepare for our planned scaling in Q3.
• The monsoon season has now hit in India, bringing with it both positive implications (e.g. more availability for farmers to do water exchange) and negative ones (e.g. cloudy weather causing worse water quality).

In our Welfare Standard Department:

• We've partnered with Adikavi Nannaya University to establish a research center studying Indian major carp welfare, and are setting up experimental ponds there (all fishes living there will be treated with high standards and later released into a local body of water where they naturally live).
• We're investigating the idea of "focus farms"—focusing a greater proportion of our efforts on the few farms that account for a disproportionate number of welfare issues.

• Our China Specialist, Lu, has begun a two-month field visit, in which she will visit farms, meet stakeholders, and deliver a lecture at Zhejiang University. More updates soon!

• We're hiring in Andhra Pradesh, India! Apply for mid-level Field Manager roles, open to all Indians. We are also hiring Data Collectors—a great fit for Telugu-speaking Indians who enjoy fieldwork. You can learn about all our open positions on our new Careers page.
• Shrimp Welfare Project is looking for a Head of Programmes to work remotely, with some travel. Apply before July 2nd, 2023.
• People For Animals Public Policy Foundation, India, is seeking a Director of Fellowship to lead the Ahimsa Fellowship.
• The Good Food Institute is hiring for a Vice President of Operations to work remotely in the US.

• Norwegian agencies face criticism from Norway’s National Audit Office for poor salmon welfare in fish farms.
• India’s National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources developed an app to help farmers diagnose and treat fish diseases. 
• A fish passage project in Waikato, New Zealand, has passed a crucial test for migration of tuna (eels) to the sea for spawning during summer.
• Two scuba divers befriended wild fishes in different parts of the world.
• The River Thames was injected with oxygen for 11 days in August 2022 to revive dissolved oxygen levels and prevent fishes’ deaths.
• European Parliament's Committee on Fisheries published a study on fish welfare in EU aquaculture, highlighting key challenges including balancing science and ethics, on-site assessment, species-specific needs, and regulatory frameworks.