Efforts Grow to Ban Octopus Farming

"Octopuses are physiologically and behaviorally too complex to be exploited in intensive settings, and the evidence from Mexico's own Sisal farm speaks for itself. Octopus farming is not a feasible industry."

"At Moluscos del Mayab, an average of 388 octopus are butchered and sold every four months, following an industrial breeding cycle. That number would likely be much higher, but the pre-sale mortality rate for the four-eyed octopus in this setting hovers around 52 percent. Horrifyingly, about a third of those deaths are attributable to cannibalism."

Mexico's Ecologist Green Party introduced a bill to ban octopus factory farming nationwide, which would shut down the Western hemisphere's only known octopus farm in Sisal, Yucatan. The farm, operated by UNAM and commercial partner Moluscos del Mayab, kills approximately 388 octopuses every four months. The operation suffers a 52 percent pre-sale mortality rate, with about one-third of deaths caused by cannibalism resulting from crowded factory conditions. Octopuses are solitary, intelligent creatures capable of tool use and potentially conscious. Experts argue octopuses are too physiologically and behaviorally complex for intensive farming, making the industry unfeasible and ethically problematic.

Read at Futurism