Ashlee Vance examines how fish slaughter methods keep animals conscious for up to an hour, releasing stress hormones that make flesh acidic and prone to spoilage. A new robotic system uses computer vision to spike the brain immediately after capture, reducing suffering while preserving meat quality and extending shelf life.
Our process of basically spiking the fish in the brain—
This looks and sounds rough, and it is. Still, it's considered far more humane than the typical alternative.
Flopping around on the deck of the boat and releasing stress hormones and lactic acid, or suffocating, leads to decay of meat quality and shelf life.
While they're on the boat? Exactly. After they've been caught.
It can take up to an hour for them to lose consciousness. Kind of like the fish is exercising, the adrenaline, the cortisol, the lactic acid, all that stuff makes the meat more acidic, which makes it more prime for the naturally occurring bacteria to grow.
And so these boys decided to build a robot to kill fish with computer vision. Whoa! Precision.
