A point that should be considered within the fish-
farming industry is the extent to which attitudes to fish
welfare are affected by the terminology that is used. In
English, there has been a tendency to use plant terms
when referring to farmed fish or fish taken from the
sea. A cage full of salmon is sometimes called a crop,
and the process of slaughter is sometimes called harvesting. Farmers refer to ‘growing the fish’, like ‘growing wheat’, but animals are not the same as plants. It is
the fish that grow and the farmer who feeds and man-ages them. Such terms make the fish seem less like
individual animals, and encourage farm staff to view
them as objects rather than sentient beings and perhaps to treat them badly. Hence the terms ‘crop’ and
‘harvest’ and ‘growing the fish’ are inappropriate and
should not be used.