Giulia Malerbi on banning octopus farming globally

Giulia Malerbi is attempting to prevent octopus from being intensively farmed for food. As head of Global policy at The Aquatic Life Institute, Giulia’s important work aims to stop intensive octopus farming before it even begins and has hopefully contributed to the passing of some groundbreaking legislation to support this ban. 

A really refreshing episode about the complexities of advocating for such an unknown species with the ins and outs of why farming this inquisitive species is so problematic from multiple perspectives.

Resources:

• Aquatic Life Institute's Campaign Page
• The Soul of an Octopus - book
• My Octopus Teacher - documentary 
• EA Forum Post - Banning Octopus Farming
• ALI Fish Policy
• Octopus ban campaign

00:00:00:00 | Intro
00:01:42:13 | A recent mistake others can learn from
00:06:39:12 | Octopus farming in the United States
00:16:36:18 | Octopus welfare challenges
00:32:21:20 | Strategy behind choosing focus on octopuses
00:43:14:03 | Global campaign against octopus farming
00:48:38:09 | Industry reasons for farming octopus
00:53:57:00 | Other projects of Aquatic Life Institute
00:57:51:14 | How important is public opinion to politicians and legislators
01:03:17:05 | Closing questions

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Transcript

Giulia: High welfare octopus farming is just not possible because of how peculiar these animals are and how difficult, if not impossible, it would be to provide them with the adequate enrichment. 

Amy: Hi, my name is Amy.

James: And my name is James. 

Amy: And this is How I Learned to Love Shrimp, a podcast about promising ways to help animals and build the animal advocacy movement. Giulia Malerbi spends her time advocating for an animal that's not yet being farmed, octopus. As head of global policy at the Aquatic Life Institute, Giulia's important work aims to stop intensive octopus farming before it even begins, and has hopefully contributed to the passing of some groundbreaking legislation to support this ban. A really refreshing episode this week about the complexities of advocating for such an unknown species, with the ins and outs of why farming this inquisitive species is so problematic from multiple perspectives. 

James: Hi, everyone. We are joined today by Giulia Malerbi, who is the head of global policy at the Aquatic Life Institute. With expertise in animal welfare and a background in animal science, Giulia works to improve the conditions of animals raised or caught for food worldwide by engaging with national and international stakeholders. More specifically, Giulia's academic background includes degrees in animal breeding techniques and a masters in animal welfare science, ethics and law. She's currently pursuing a masters in animal law studies at the Lewis and Clark Law School. So welcome, Giulia. 

Giulia: Thank you. It's great to be here. 

James: Well, what's a mistake you've made recently? And. Yeah, anything you can share that others could learn from? 

Giulia: I think it's a good time to start diving right into the octopus campaign topic. And I would like to share a mistake that I feel I made, maybe a naive one, at the beginning of the campaign. So I sort of assumed that everyone would just be convinced solely by the animal welfare argument. And as we'll see, there are a lot of animal welfare concerns associated with this practice. But my mistake, I think was to assume that everybody would just be on board with that. I learned that the hard way that different people are persuaded by different aspects of an issue. For some, the environmental or even the economic concerns might resonate more strongly than the ethical considerations. 

Giulia: Now, the positive takeaway, I guess I can say, from this mistake, is that this sort of allowed us to expand the campaign to address the full spectrum of issues associated with this harmful practice. So hopefully now we have a stronger case to fight against octopus farming. 

Amy: It's so common, isn't it? I feel like Sharon and Leah touched on this as well, that kind of sense of naivety when you learn about the welfare message and that means something to you and just going like, oh, so all I need to do is just tell more people because then everyone will have that same opinion as me that this needs to change or this needs to stop in some way. I'm interested as a follow up because you work on the policy side. Was that also your opinion? Was that your opinion on that the public would just follow suit or that policymakers would care about the welfare challenges? 

Giulia: I think my mistake was mostly referred to policymakers. Legislators, yes, because I again realized that legislators come from all walks of life, so they have their own agendas, their own biases, their own priorities. So what I learned is that when you enter these conversations, you need to be prepared to listen and hear what their main interest is and then adapt your argument to their agendas. Yeah. Once you learn to do that, it's actually a lot more helpful to advance animal welfare protection. But it's not always easy, especially for, yeah, like you were saying, Amy, someone like me, that I just think, you know, the animal welfare aspect for me is enough. So why doesn't everybody agree with that? And we know that's not the case. 

James: Can you say more about the feedback you got that made you realise actually you need to expand, talk about the other kind of harms of octopus farming?

Giulia: Without going into the details, but I was having this chat with a legislator in a US state and I was presenting very formally all the welfare concerns associated with this practice. And he just stopped me sort of like two minutes in asking, yeah, okay but why should my constituents be interested in this?

James: Care about this? 

Giulia: Like you said, this doesn't exist. You said there's very few possibilities that it's going to happen in this state. So why should I care? You know, I was like, well, I just shared with you the welfare concerns. And it was clear to me that's, yeah, that's not relevant enough to him. Not because, you know, he's a bad person. That's not the point, it’s because obviously he has in his mind his citizens. Right. And what they elected him for. So that's when we started expanding the campaign, which actually is a good thing because as we'll mention, there's tons of issues associated with this practice. 

Giulia: But then the environmental argument resonated with this person a lot more because the implications that this farming could have on their ecosystem and on the local community would actually be like a lot more detrimental to them rather than the welfare concerns per se. 

Amy: It's such a positive learning and I think something that many advocates in the movement can learn from. When we do our campaigns training, we're trying to understand what do they want to hear from their perspective. And we're so used to communicating our campaign messages and taglines based on what we think they should hear rather than who are we talking to, what's the target and what motivates them, because that's going to be the thing that changes their mind. So, yeah, I think you've touched on something really important there, and I'm glad you had that learning fairly early on in order to pivot and just grow as a negotiator. So we're talking about octopus farming today. As you've said, that's going to be a really main topic, and that's because of a recent win that you've had in the US. 

Amy: Do you want to just briefly explain to us what this success has been so that we understand the context for the conversation today? 

Giulia: Sure. So this is one of the top, I guess, successes that we had in the Octopus farming ban campaign in this past year. I think if you had told me one year ago that we were going to introduce a bill at the federal level, I would have just not believed you. So I'm still quite excited about this. So what happened is that Senator Whitehouse, together with Senator Murkowski, co-sponsored a bipartisan bill called the Octopus Act. And just to give you the full name, it's the Opposing the Cultivation and Trade of Octopus Produced through Unethical Strategies, which is very long. 

James: But they love acronyms. They really love doing acronyms. It's insane. But it's quite a good one. 

Giulia: Yeah. And it's pretty spot on because it's the octopus act, so.

James: Yeah. 

Amy: What, it spells octopus? 

Giulia: Yeah, that's the whole point. Yeah. 

Amy: Oh, man. Love it. 

James: Everything, right? Like the EATS act is like Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression. They always do these funny things. Whoever's doing them is quite a fun job. 

Giulia: Yeah. Well, it's a smart one, though, because I think it takes you straight to the point. Right? We're talking about octopus and we're talking about unethical strategies. So I think it sums up perfectly what this bill is about. Just to give you more and more context. Basically, this bipartisan bill would ban commercial octopus farming in the whole US. But also the most interesting thing to me is that it would also prohibit the import of farmed octopus products from foreign countries should these products ever become available on the market. So this is a huge signal and milestone, especially when you talk about preemptive legislation, which is something I'm becoming- I'm getting to be more and more passionate about. So, yeah, in a nutshell, that's what this bill, hopefully, if it passes into legislation, will do. 

Amy: So just really simply then. So currently, there's not that many or any potentially octopus farmed in the US? This is a preventative measure to stop farms like this being created in order to farm octopus. Is that right? 

Giulia: Yeah. Actually, technically, there is currently no operating commercial octopus farm anywhere in the world. Not official ones, at least. Okay. In the US, we heard of plans of farms being planned in several parts of the US. The most famous, I guess, sort of farm/research facility- there's a little bit of ambiguity right there- was in Hawaii, where basically they were operating, but it was a weird situation. There was basically- they were taking wild octopus from the ocean and then trying to intensively raise them in tanks. But they also had, like, an agreement to sell them to local restaurants. It was a little bit of a mess, I admit to you. I know that Hawaii farm, thanks to the efforts of so many great advocates, has been, like, put on hold, sort of temporarily shut down. 

Giulia: And I hope it's not gonna open up again. But that's what they were trying to do, and that's what the industry has been trying to do for over 15 years, trying to close the breeding cycle of octopuses in captivity, because it's just very difficult to intensively farm these animals. 

Amy: And they would be intensively farmed for human consumption. 

Giulia: Yes, exactly. And I've heard a lot of claims about this. One of the main claims that the industry makes is that farming octopuses is gonna solve the problem of food security. And they call this, they call this farming effort a conservation effort. And this is linked to the fact that wild octopus populations are declining because in the past 10-15 years, the consumption of octopus meat, unfortunately, has increased. But if you look at, like, consumption patterns, this happens primarily in countries that have high disposable income. Right? So if you look, the US, Asia, and, like Europe, are like major importers of octopus meat. So the response from the industry to this was, okay, let's farm them then. So we will have more octopus meat in less time, basically. 

Giulia: Because just to give you a few details, let's say some facts about octopus, they are very fast growing animals just by default, basically. And we know how much the industry loves fast growing animals, right? So they reach maturity within a matter of months, and their natural lifespan, at least from the most common species, is one to two years. So imagine a farming cycle, this would allow a very fast turnover even in farming cycles. And obviously, what I mentioned before, this is often a luxury product, right? So they are sold at premium prices on the market. So I think, I always say that to me, these are the real reasons, like economic reasons, why these animals are being considered for intensive farming. I don't really agree with this conservation effort that they are claiming that's what they're doing it for. 

James: Am I right in thinking it was actually banned in at least one state? I think Washington state definitely outlawed, I guess, the farming. Is there any other states where this has happened or how do you think the federal effort is going to go as well? And when is that going to be decided, if you know? 

Giulia: Yeah. So as I mentioned, I think in the US we had quite a lot of progress when it comes to this proactive legislation. So Washington state is the first state that ever banned octopus farming. So the bill was signed into legislation by the governor just this past March. And now actually we had just, I think was last week or a couple of weeks ago that a similar bill presented in California by the Animal Legal Defense Fund and Social Compassion was passed actually out of Senate, out of the state senate. And so now it's waiting on the governor's desk to be signed into legislation. And that's, and that should also happen before the end of September. So let's stay tuned for this. The bill in California actually is very similar to the federal bill. 

Giulia: So on top of prohibiting the establishment of farms in the California state, it also prohibits the sale of farmed octopus products. And throughout this year, we've been partnering up with other NGOs like on top of the Animal Legal Defense Fund. Animal Rights Initiative has been leading tons of effort on this and we are collaborating with them, with several legislators in other states, from Connecticut to Hawaii to Oregon, to introduce similar bills that hopefully will further support the federal bill. It can go in different ways. I'm still a big supporter of in-state legislation because that's a big precedent that you can use to prevent the establishment of potentially harmful practices even in the future. 

James: Yeah. I mean, for me, it feels very familiar. Similar to the cultivated meat bans that happened in Florida and Alabama and Italy. Right. It's like, even though it may be not literally affecting any products, it's like you said, a signal to the industry saying, you know, people care about this. Legislators care enough to actually put something in place. So it's like, don't invest in it, don't try scale up production. Almost like a warning. So I guess it'd be nice if we could do the same. In some respects, it's cool that this ball is already rolling, so. Yeah, it sounds incredible. 

Giulia: Yeah. And I'm glad that you mentioned the- that's a very good example of bad preemptive legislation, in my view. And I actually have a friend here in Italy who was interested in the possibility of starting an industry on cultivated meat. Right. So he was, like, looking at becoming an entrepreneur, basically. And now he said, well, I'm just gonna have to build my company, industry, or project outside of Italy. Like, that's just not a smart move to me when it comes to cultivated meat. Also, because if the EU says that cultivated meat, it's safe, it's going to allow the trade basically, Italy could still not be able to stop the trade, so it would not be able to stop the import and the sale of cultivated meat in the country, just the production. 

Giulia: So it's just a bad move in so many ways, in my opinion. 

Amy: Okay, so let's dive into some of the welfare issues for octopus. Obviously, any animal that's being intensively farmed has challenges, but what's specific to octopus in this setting? 

Giulia: As I mentioned, I'll try to keep this brief, because otherwise I could go on for hours just on the welfare concerns. 

Amy: Sure.

Giulia: But especially because I come from sort of the land farmed animals advocacy movement. When I landed at Aquatic Life Institute and I started advocating for aquatic animals, I realised it's a lot harder to assess what their problems are. So at Aquatic Life Institute, what we do is that we look at our five pillars of welfare to analyse aquatic animal problems, let's say. So that's what I'm going to try to summarize those when talking about octopus. Right. So the first problem, the first pillar that we use is environmental enrichment. You probably already know that octopuses are just incredibly intelligent and complex creatures.

Giulia: They are renowned for their problem solving abilities, and this, such a high level of cognition would just not be a good fit for intensive farming, where usually, high level of enrichment is not possible. So when it comes to octopuses, these result in extreme boredom, chronic mental and physic stress, and as we've seen in another research facility in Mexico that we can dive into later, unfortunately, cannibalism as well. 

Amy: Oh, wow. Okay. 

Giulia: Yeah. 

Amy: What an octopuses actually using in the wild, like, what would be an appropriate environmental enrichment to put into a farmed facility that could echo something that they would play with or use as stimulation in a wild environment?

Giulia: That's exactly the point I wanted to make. There is no environmental enrichment that could sort of fulfil this need of high stimulation. And I'm not just saying this. It's actually, I'm saying this because it was written in the London School for Economics report that where independent scientists worked on, and they came to the conclusion that high welfare octopus farming is just not possible because of how peculiar these animals are and how difficult, if not impossible, it would be to provide them with the adequate enrichment. And I also think that this is also due to the fact that we know so little, like, we understand so little about these animals. I've seen videos of some of the things they can do. 

Giulia: There was an octopus that was basically kept in a jar in a research facility, and he figured out a way to take the lid off. Yeah, get out. 

Amy: I've seen this. 

Giulia: There was a tank, like, with fish. Like eat the fish, go back in the jar and put the lid back on. 

James: No way. 

Giulia: How do you. How do you even understand that? You know, and animal who doesn't have, like, a central system like ours, or not even similar to even other aquatic animals, which are extremely complex beings already, octopus is just too complicated for us to be able to fully care for them like they, you know, they would need in order to thrive, not just survive, basically. 

Amy: Yeah, sure. 

Giulia: Yeah. I wanted to touch upon the other pillars of welfare before I forget, when it comes to octopus farming, just because I believe these are very important parts that actually lead to other profound issues that are often not taken into account when we talk about this practice. So the second pillar that we use is actually feed composition. And this is a big point that I want to make. Now, octopus is a carnivorous species. So this means that they need to eat, well, in short, other fish, in order to thrive. So we can dive into this later when we talk about the sustainability aspect of this practice. 

Giulia: But I think I just want to say it out loud, like, farming carnivorous species is not a sustainable practice, because if you look at this from a purely food security point of view, the feed that you are giving to these animals could be used to directly nourish human, otherwise. Right? Like taking away the sort of the animal welfare perspective point of view. It's like with salmon farming. Like salmon is also carnivorous animal. To make one salmon rich, harvest weight, which means ready to be sold on the market, you need to feed a salmon, 120 anchovies. So if we are looking at purely the food security argument, humans could eat the anchovies directly. So this claim that this is a sustainable practice is once again flawed. 

Amy: And what are those figures for octopus? Do you know how much they would need to be fed in order to get to, like, slaughter weight? 

Giulia: Yeah. So we've seen some studies that try again to figure this out, and it seems that the ratio is three to one. So basically, to reach one octopus to, I guess I could say, harvest weight, you need to feed him three times his weight. And also I was reading that octopuses are very picky eaters. So I've heard industry reports saying, oh, no, we're just going to try to get them on plant based diets or to use basically discard from the fish meal, fish oil production system, but that's not going to work. This is a carnivorous animal. The objective, I think, especially in research and especially in 2024, shouldn't be trying to make a carnivorous animal survive on a diet that is not suitable for his physiology basically. Taking all of these into account, the mortality rate is extremely high. 

Giulia: In the research facility that I mentioned that we sort of investigated in Mexico, they had a mortality rate of 52%. Now, again, maybe because of the mistake that I shared with you at the beginning, I always try to drift away from just the animal welfare problem. But even if you look at this production parameter, this is not going to be a profitable activity, it's not a sustainable practice, it's not going to look like a profitable one. Researchers have been trying to close this breeding cycle in captivity for over 15 years, and they're still struggling. 

James: Can you say more about that? What do you mean by close the breeding cycle? 

Giulia: It basically means successfully being able to make them breed in captivity. And because of all these welfare concerns, like I mentioned, like from environmental enrichment and then stocking density, which I'm going to get to in a second, these animals do not willingly reproduce in captivity. Actually, as mentioned already, we've heard of problems of cannibalism. So what we heard, for example, this facility in Mexico, what they were doing is that they were taking juveniles or pregnant females from the ocean and then trying to farm those, so raise those intensively indoors. So that's not a closed breeding cycle, right? A closed breeding cycle is basically when you have your broodstock, like your breeding parents, allow me to put it this way, and yeah, you just have the whole cycle in captivity, but they still need to rely on the wild octopus populations. 

Giulia: So again, let me go back to that claim. Farming is gonna save their wild counterparts. It's again flawed because you're actually depleting more the populations that are already suffering. 

Amy: I think we often don't talk enough about the losses within the supply chain. And within that cycle, the stats I heard about trying to transport fish and the loss being about 50%, I think, of the industry, of the supply being lost within the process. I think even the public would be interested in that angle. Can you imagine any other food transport? And there's, you know, just like 50% of the back of the lorry just drops off into the motorway because we've just, like, lost 50% of the supply. Like, it's outrageous that the- that it's like, from the waste perspective, like food waste, obviously, food security, as you were saying. But just like, in terms of, you know, that, like, common sense showing that, like, it's obviously not sustainable to be raising or making a food product where you're going to lose 50% along the way, I think it's crazy. 

Giulia: Yeah. And I've often heard, especially as I mentioned when I was transitioning from land farmed animals to aquatic animals, I was sort of intrigued by this logic that I read that the industry was sort of trying to sell. You know, aquaculture is more efficient than farming land animals, right? And this claim was based on the fact that producing aquatic animal proteins requires less feed than producing terrestrial animal protein. So, for example, it takes one kilo and a half of feed to produce one kilo of fish flesh. So this- they argue that it's way more efficient than, you know, feed to flesh ratio for land animals like chickens or cows. The problem of this logic is that you're not addressing the type of feed required for these animals. 

Giulia: So if we are talking about salmons, which, as I'm sure you know, it's a pretty common aquaculture production, their feed is wild caught fish. So it's other animals, which is often referred as fish meal, fish oil. But we're really talking about. Yeah, for example, in the case of salmon, like anchovies being caught and then fed to salmon, so we can have one salmon on the plate. So, yeah, this logic is very misleading to me because it's not taking into account that, yeah, the feed that you're giving to this carnivorous species. And again, I feel strongly about this because octopus is another carnivorous species that you just want to add to our production system, and that's not the direction that we should be taking in 2024. 

Giulia: So, yeah, another point that I wanted to mention is about stocking density, because these animals are solitary by nature. So this means that they would not thrive in crowded conditions. Unfortunately, as we know from other standard industry practices, high stocking density is actually a pretty common practice. Right. And as I mentioned already, we've seen that when it comes to octopuses, this results in cannibalism. Out of that 50% mortality rate, I think 30% was due to cannibalism. So this is another big signal that these animals are not suited for intensive and crowded confinement and conditions. Another just couple of points that I wanted to mention. Another pillar that we use is water quality. Obviously, when it comes to aquatic animals, is the fundamental aspect, not often taken into account. Octopuses are very fragile because they lack both an internal and an external skeleton. 

Giulia: Any sudden change in the environment would mean, you know, serious harm to their skin. They can get skin lesions very easily. And imagine managing these animals in a typical farming setting. It would just be very hard to have people trained to do this in a correct way. The last point that I want to make is about stunning and slaughter, because this is another huge issue and actually probably the only one the industry agrees with us on. There is no humane slaughter method to date approved to humanely slaughter these animals. We know that these methods have been studied. 

Giulia: Again, I was reading some studies for like, nine or eight years ago, so for quite a long time, but they just have not figured it out because their physiology is so complicated that it seems that they are not effectively stunned before they get slaughtered. So the current. I was asked about this before, but the current slaughter method, for example, the ones caught in the wild, include the use of ice slurry, which is a highly inhumane, scientifically proven method to slaughter animals. And actually, even the European Food Safety Authority discourages the use of ice slurry for several fish species because of the welfare concerns linked to this method. 

James: That's because they don't have a central nervous system, so you can't just like, easily cut off their head or something. Right? They've got like, distributed nodes of the nervous system, is that right? 

Giulia: Exactly. Exactly, yes. And I don't even want to get into that because we just don't have the exact science of how these animals work. I think you would agree with me that just trying to farm animal that we know so little about, claiming that, oh, we'll figure it out along the way, that's actually what- the industry feedback that they gave me, that they're going to figure it out along the way, is just not the direction that we should be taking. And I've seen other ways of slaughtering octopuses, which I don't recommend watching if you are a compassionate, because it basically includes just getting them and slamming them on the ground. 

James: I actually saw that in Turkey, near where we live. But, yeah, someone just had an octopus and just smashing against the rocks over and over again, honestly, for minutes. It was so fucked up, so intense. 

Giulia: Exactly. 

James: Yeah. 

Amy: Wow. So the welfare things that you mentioned then, so they're not a million miles away from other aquatic welfare issues, right? Like the standard ones are coming up. We've got environmental enrichment, stocking density, etcetera. Obviously, currently this affects, like, a very relatively small number of animals, comparatively to other aquatic animals that are currently suffering, being bred, as you said, like huge salmon farming industry, you know, trout, big farms of fish that are being currently farmed and slaughtered for food. What is it that drove you to focus on this particular animal with it being kind of a preemptive strategy? And so was it the strategy of thinking of something that you can stop before it develops? 

Amy: Or was it specifically the species that you wanted to capitalise on some, like, press and public knowledge around octopus due to something like The Octopus Teacher or just generally octopus having a bit more press at that time. 

Giulia: Thanks, Amy. This is an excellent question, and I think I want to start by saying that my answer is not going to convince everyone, but this is actually great because I think as animal advocates, we should embrace different strategies and different approaches, right? In a nutshell, the reason why I became so passionate about preemptive legislation, or I like to call it proactive actions, is that because this campaign would prevent the establishment of a harmful practice before it becomes entrenched. So if you think if this ban would ever be enacted at the global level, like I'm hoping it will, this means that octopuses would just never be subjected to captivity practices that just fail to meet their complex behavioural and physiological needs. 

Giulia: I would like to give you, I guess, a more extreme, but I hope, illustrative example by talking about another species that many advocates and myself included and NGOs have been focusing on, which are broiler chickens. Now, imagine that we had a time machine and we could go back 70 years when more or less the poultry industry sort of start intensively selecting for fast growing broilers. Right. If at that time advocates had managed to ban the breeding of these fast growing broilers, today we wouldn't be fighting these same battles. Right? We could focus our resources and time to address other welfare issues of these animals, like, again, environmental enrichment, which always seems like a second on the to do list, but instead, we're trying to undo decades of harm caused by poor breeding practices. 

Giulia: So I made this example because I don't want to see us 50 years from today, sitting at a table discussing improvements in welfare standards for octopus farming, because we didn't act when we had the chance. So I became an advocate for this proactive measures that prioritise animal welfare and environmental concerns from the very start, rather than try to address those after irreversible damage has already occurred.

Amy: Yeah, I definitely see that, and I wonder if I can press you that- so what happens if, in 50 years, we're still having to work on, like, trout welfare measures because some of our movement, limited resource was put towards a species that wasn't yet farmed? Like, how much do you think this work kind of detracts from the animals that are currently in captivity and being farmed? 

Giulia: Yeah, that's a great point. And I should mention that, obviously, our octopus farming ban campaign is one of the areas of where we work. But I always call octopus my champion animal. Right. And I use this because, let's face it, octopus is a very charismatic aquatic animal. It's more relatable than other species. That's just the way it is. Right. So I'm often using, allow me the term, our octopus farming ban campaign to open the conversation to talk about other aquatic species and what we can do to help them. And this is actually part of our theory of change at Aquatic Life Institute, which is called our four Rs approach to seafood system reform. So just to briefly explain what it is, we basically have these four areas of work that tackle, Amy, what you were just saying right now. 

Giulia: So the first R is reduce. So we aim to reduce the animals and hopefully remove animals from the seafood system and the supply chain. The second point is refine. So refining the conditions of animals that are currently, like you were saying, kept or captured, actually, for wild capture fisheries in the seafood system. The third R is replace. So replacing animal products with, well, hopefully plant based or cell based alternative to at least the extent possible. And the fourth R is reject. So reject the introduction of new species into the seafood system and its supply chain. So you're absolutely right. I don't think we should be focusing on one area per se. And, in fact, that's not what we're doing. But we have been heavily involved, especially I directly, in the global policy space in food system transformation work. 

Giulia: And I've seen some data pretty alarming. For example, the FAO roadmap that was published last December, 2023, pushes for an increase in aquaculture of 75% from here to 2030. So what do they mean by pushing for more aquaculture? Do you mean increasing the subsidy and the production of algae? Or do you mean licensing new salmon farms? Or do you mean trying to domesticate new marine species? Because these are all three very different problems, and I believe they should be addressed with a different strategy. So that's what we're doing right here, basically. You know, octopus farming doesn't exist yet. We have a great opportunity ahead of us. We're going for it. 

Amy: Yeah. No, I think that makes a lot of sense. I also recognize when there are things in, you know, that come up that you could be reactive to. Like, there was such a buzz around The Octopus Teacher documentary on Netflix, and I think just using that to capitalise on bringing in a new audience who maybe now care more about this particular species, bringing that audience in and giving them a narrative that they can follow that then eventually pushes them towards other species and caring for other aquatic life. I think that strategy makes a lot of sense. I wonder if I can ask James, do you have an opinion on this? Like, the sort of preemptive strategy versus, like, working on farmed animals currently? 

James: You know, it's obviously good to take a variety of approaches or, like, do a bit of both. The question is, yeah, what's the right allocation of resources? What, one to the other? Yeah, it is tough, because I guess it's all questions like, you know, how, like, what is the estimated scale of the octopus farming in this from the future? Like, do we think it's going to reach the, like, of the 500 billion that shrimp is, or do we think it's gonna be like, several million like, some other species I can't think of. So I guess, like, that all kind of plays into it as well. 

James: But, yeah, I mean, definitely there's, like, also the non animal benefits that maybe it's kind of been mentioned, like, you know, building relations with policymakers, actually forming, like, coalitions, actually winning stuff, gaining momentum, and, like, kind of setting precedent. So I think there are some, like, non direct animal welfare benefits that have probably happened as well. So I don't know what the exact ratio is, but, I mean, it seems like a good use of time. Otherwise we wouldn't invite you here, Giulia, so congrats. 

Giulia: I can definitely give you some numbers as well. 

James: Oh, yeah. I'd be curious. Yeah. 

Giulia: There's a company in Spain that were supposedly going to start selling octopus, I believe was last summer. They declared that they were going to be able to breed, basically, and sell 1 million octopus a year. So that's a pretty high number. And because of all the pushback, I like to think, or maybe just the difficulties that they encountered, as I mentioned already, in breeding them, they still have not started. So imagine if that was one year ago. We sort of already avoided 1 million animals being involved, you know, and farmed and confined for this practice. And you're right, and I don't. It's like what I mentioned at the beginning, and actually, that's what I think came up in Sharon and Leah's talk, that we shouldn't all have, like, the same approaches and the same strategies. It's great that we have diverse tactics. 

Giulia: And I think the reason why I'm so passionate about this, on top of, you know, falling in love with this, basically aliens of the ocean. But on top of this, it's because we work a lot at the UN level. And the United Nations, they have a lot of. A lot of programs. One of their programs is called the United Nations Development Program. Right? So it's a program that gives funding to emerging sustainable projects. Now, guess what they funded. Now, the United Nations Development Program gave a huge grant as part of the climate mitigation program to this research facility in Mexico to try and farm octopus as a conservation effort. 

James: So ridiculous. 

Giulia: They invested, I think it was 50K, as a sort of initial stage, you know, I see the point when people tell me, but there's no animals currently being farmed. Yes, but there's money and skills and researchers and science being already invested in figuring out how to farm them. What if we redirect all this energy, all this funding, all these skills to alternative type of food production, like plant based, to make an example? Wouldn't that be a huge step forward for animals and animal protection as well? That's sort of how I see it. You know, maybe approaching it for a more global perspective and taking into account the whole food system transformation work that we try to do. 

James: Well, you kind of mentioned ideally this ban wouldn't stay limited to the US and always says it is an imports component, but it would also go global. What's the visual mechanism for how it goes global? Because I guess I don't really know how that works for products and I don't know if there's much precedent. So, yeah, I'm curious to hear about that in global expansion. 

Giulia: The reason why we decided to launch a global campaign and not call it just for one jurisdiction or another is because we heard of plans of potential farms being planned in Spain, Mexico, the US, Japan. So we really didn't want to tackle this as a single jurisdictional problem. So that's why we also don't focus on one specific company, because based on what I just shared with you, right now, there's tons of research facilities that are trying to figure out how to farm them, right? So scaling up. So in the US, as I mentioned, we had quite a lot of successes, mostly due through collaborative partnerships, I think, in the policy space. But I think I can say in the animal advocacy movement, usually partnership and effective collaboration is what scores. Basically, it's what drives the goal home. 

Giulia: That's how we approach the issue, providing scientific expertise. So we're mostly, I would say generally we are behind the scenes. So we have a lot of conversations with NGOs or scientists or legislators in a specific jurisdiction and we arm them with the tools that then they can adapt to their own situation to propose a legislation that is effective in protecting octopuses. So for example, in the US, as I mentioned, we partner up with Animal Rights Initiative, Animal Legal Defense Fund, Social Compassion, Mercy For Animals, and all of these NGO's sort of adapt then the knowledge, and we help them in drafting the bill, sometimes reviewing the language, because you need to be very careful that a new bill introduced doesn't leave loopholes for the industry to exploit, making sure, for example, that the definition of aquaculture is clear or tiny items like this. 

Giulia: In Latin America, for example, we partner up with Fundación Veg, who are doing an amazing job both in Chile and Mexico. And we're also working with them on drafting bills that would be relevant for their countries and for their jurisdiction in establishing preemptive bans on octopus farming. I'm not sure I fully answered your question because basically we adapt. I guess that's the answer in a nutshell, based on where and who we're working with. 

James: Initially, I thought maybe you're pursuing some kind of like, I don't even know what body would enforce it, like UN / WTO style, like no more global moratorium. But it seems more like you kind of hear of countries that are interested and then you try to find people in that country and then you try to push it there and it's a bit more like reactive and kind of whack-a-mole as you hear about the industry's plans. Is that right? 

Giulia: Yeah. Also because you need to take into account that, as we mentioned at the beginning, I'm currently studying legislation, basically, and in several of the jurisdictions that I've analysed to write my paper against octopus farming, let's say most of the aquaculture, well, actually, all aquaculture legislation does not have specific standards or specific considerations for cephalopods welfare. So this means that this potentially, like, emerging industry, if, you know, if it takes place, could be completely unregulated. And that's on the legislative point of view. This is a big risk because already the protections that we have, you know, again, let's think of land farmed animals. I guess you would agree with me that they're very minimal. So imagine if those were not even into place. You can do to these animals basically whatever you feel like. 

Giulia: And, yeah, I don't think that's something that should be allowed in 2024 in any jurisdiction. But obviously, we cannot go in, you know, and just say, hey, this is what you have to do, especially in countries where maybe we don't even have that in depth expertise. So that's why I was mentioning that at Aquatic Life Institute, we run the Aquatic Animal Alliance, which is this global coalition of. I think we just reached 150 members, which is pretty cool. And, yeah, we partner up with them, so maybe they signal an opportunity, like, hey, that's what happened with Mexico and Chile. That's what Fundación Veg is leading on the effort of sort of constantly consulting with us to provide, you know, more behind the scenes expertise, put it that way. 

Giulia: But then they are the ones actually, you know, carrying out the effort and, you know, drafting legislation that is relevant for their own jurisdiction. Yeah, it's learn and adapt. I guess that's the strategy.

Amy: Can you maybe just summarise for me in this, as we kind of close upon this octopus section? So I'm trying to understand. You've obviously explained to us that it's, you know, from your perspective, not sustainable. There's a high mortality rate during production. You know, they're not easy to kill. They're not easy to raise. What is it that the industry thinks is good about raising octopus? Is it that they can sell them for a lot more than raising, like, some of the fish species? Like, what is the motivation from the actual producer side? 

Giulia: So the official version is conservation effort. Right.

Amy: Sorry, so I guess I don't mean, like, the, like what their, you know, fancy PR line is. Like, why would you want to start an octopus business if half of them are going to die? You know, the others maybe eat each other and then you can't kill them. It's like, what is the. If I was a producer, like, what's my motivation? Why do I actually want to farm this species? It seems crazy to me. 

Giulia: So obviously I can answer, not being a producer, but what I think goes on in their heads and straight, simple answer, money. 

Amy: Okay, so they can sell them for more than raising, like, trout or something. 

Giulia: Oh, octopus meat is sold at premium prices. 

Amy: And so it must be sold for a lot if you're even accounting for, like, say, a potential 50% mortality. So the numbers must be pretty significant if you can be, like, bothered to raise something that is not going to enjoy being in captivity. Not easy to breed. Yeah, the numbers must be quite high then. 

Giulia: I share your confusion on this, I guess. Again, same, because I've been thinking about this, and the more I learn about this idea, the more terrible I think it is. If I were a producer, I would just never engage in such a practice. Even just looking at it from the economics perspective, I'm sure there are other points that I do not take into account, even what I just shared with you right now, the fact that you can get a grant from the United Nations Development Program. Maybe you are a research facility and you can say you are affiliated with the UN and they paid you to work on a very super cool, fancy project. I don't know, maybe that could be another reason why, you know, these animals became attractive for intensive farming. 

Amy: Do you also work on, like, the consumer side? So I'm seeing that, like, the biggest issue is actually the demand for this, like, exotic food product. Does that also mean we need to do a lot more work on the, like, consumer side to maybe deter people from demanding this product? 

Giulia: I admitted that's not my, you know, not my direct area of work, but I think it's a fundamental, just public awareness in general. First of all, you know, on these emerging topics, like, I often talk about this, but more in general about the sentient and the needs and just the peculiarity of aquatic animals. So far, as we mentioned, octopus meat comes from the wild populations. And I want to make it clear that our campaign does not address wild caught fisheries. That's a whole other area of work. We're just quoting what Leah, I think, and Sharon were saying in the advocacy movement, you got to be focused and if you want to be effective. And when they were saying that, I was like, yes, this is a good point. 

Giulia: I need to remember because obviously, yes, if you ask me, I would encourage people not even to eat wild octopuses. But, yeah, that's absolutely not the goal of our campaign. Right. Our campaign focuses on the intensive confinement of these animals. So it's a different objective, but absolutely awareness raising. It's fundamental for all aquatic species. We do a lot of, you know, like, interviews like this one. We take part in webinars and conferences to familiarise even animal advocates on the topic, because, I mean, it's not a given. I didn't know much before starting working for aquatic animals. So, yeah, absolutely. More awareness needs to be done, but there's great, you know, organisations that work on public awareness. Now, one that pops into mind is Sentient. And, you know, they write a lot and they discuss a lot on aquatic animals as well. 

Giulia: But I think when I was talking to them, I think those are, like, their less. How do you say it? The less clicked articles. 

James: Okay. 

Giulia: Yeah. Oh, well, I mean, I was like, you guys hang in there, right? You keep talking about aquatic animals, but, I mean, I fully acknowledge it's not an easy topic. They're not as easy to relate to. 

Amy: Sure. 

James: On the topic of focus, maybe we can move on from the Octopus campaign to your other campaigns on the opposite topic of focus. Yeah. I'm curious, what are the other pieces of work maybe in the policy realm that Aquatic Life Institute works on? 

Giulia: Yeah. So as I mentioned before, I sort of already summarised our four R's approach, and that, I think, can give you an idea of the areas where we try to intervene. More specifically, at the policy level. One of my, I guess, daily fun activities is crafting and providing feedback to national and international bodies. So by feedback, it's a very general word. I always struggle to explain what is exactly that I do, but I'll give it a try. So it could be that a country, for example, puts out a public consultation or just presents, like, one thing that comes to mind is the South African Aquaculture Development Bill. Right. So they want to follow the directives of the FAO and push for more aquaculture. Right. And so they have a plan on how to do it. 

Giulia: So our sort of role as Aquatic Life Institute is that we usually are asked by our partners and our, you know, members of the Aquatic Animal Alliance to join this feedback. Right. So to provide them the expertise, the specific technical expertise that they might just not have, usually what we say is, hey, let's take into account aquatic animal welfare, since that's what you're talking about. So sometimes my job feels like putting a foot in the doors, and it's hard. I'm not going to deny, I mean, cage free work. It's hard. I was working in that field first, but then I came to aquatic animals, and that looked easy. And I'm saying this because of the complexity that it is not only to craft policies, you know, you cannot make one single ask like a cage free ask, right? 

Giulia: There's hundreds of fish species farmed who have, like, different needs and different characteristics. So you cannot make a single generalised ask. That's why it's harder to make campaigns on aquatic animals. On top of that, when governments talk about development of aquaculture or fisheries, for example, there's generally no mention of aquatic animal welfare. So really, our work is to make these legislators or policymakers just start discussing about this topic as an issue, as a topic. So we started a more, I guess I could say, more recent program that my colleague Christine leads on. She's our head of fisheries welfare. So what goes on in capture wild fisheries is, even if possible, more complicated, because you only really have control in the last moments of life of the animal, right? 

Giulia: You don't really get a saying in what happens in the ocean, apart from, let's not go into, like, human activities that impact the oceans. But let's say the retrieval phase is where we focus a lot of our efforts on. And Christine just joined last year, the Pelagic Advisory Council and the Long Distance Advisory Council. Again, her role is to advocate for the welfare of wild caught fish. She probably has a tougher job than mine because the fact that these animals, I think she's still debating whether these animals are sentient or not, because a lot of these people working in fisheries don't believe these animals are. 

James: And in your engagement with legislators or policymakers, do you often talk about public opinion around aquatic animals? And to what extent do you think that's an important part of your advocacy to politicians or legislators? 

Giulia: Generally, especially when I talk to policymakers and legislators. Again, based on my experience, I decided to leave sort of the public perception of the public point of view out of my conversations. This is honestly because I realised that many of these policymakers do not care if I bring forward, and this is a very straightforward answer, if I bring forward a pool that was organised, or maybe that I had 200 people coming to my latest presentation against octopus farming, that's not what they find relevant. So this goes back to one of my initial answers. I adapt to what they want to hear. 

Giulia: So I realise that talking about other concerns, like the environmental concerns associated with this practice, which is, for example, a potential farm, could release a lot of pollutants and effluents in the surrounding ecosystem, hence really polluting the environment where you and your constituents live in. That's a lot more relevant than saying that in another part of the world, there was a webinar that 30 people watched that got a lot of positive feedback, and people are against it. Only thing that I bring into discussion, which I'm sure we can share a link to that, is the avast petition, because it's a petition against octopus farming that has reached already over 1 million signatories. So an impactful number. But I'll be honest with you, I might just mention it and move on to the other items on my arguments list. 

Amy: There's, the sweet spot is where policymakers here, it's a bit like cage free. The industry have moved. So then when you go to policy, there's no pushback from the industry because they want legislation to be put in place to stop imports and other competitive markets taking over. If they're all going to go cage free and if public opinion's also then on the way, you're taking the policymaker this like, full package of, like, it makes sense to just tick this final box now because we've got the rest of the ducks in a row. Whereas I think with octopus farming, as you say, like, there isn't a great sense of public opinion on this. Like, the industry are kind of motivated to do it from an economic perspective. So you're not really taking them like that full package right now. 

Amy: You're just saying, like, here's an interesting topic that we can prevent from an animal welfare perspective. So I think that makes a lot of sense. And as you say, it's not that it's not a good tactic. It's just not the tactic for octopus or potentially other aquatic species right now because it's not like packaged in that same way. 

Giulia: Yeah. And actually, two things that I wanted to mention regarding this, especially in Spain, there are a lot of marketing efforts that are really pushing for an increased consumption of octopus meat. So that can be very misleading to a person of the general public that is not aware of what's going on with wild octopuses, has no clue of what's going on in the farming, and then is bombarded with this advertisement saying that octopus meat is great, it's healthy and you should eat it more. And also, when you mention about public support, actually, that's sort of the reverse tactic that we used in Oregon, where hopefully we're going to be able to introduce a bill in the 2025 legislative session. So in Oregon, what the legislator sponsoring the bill was really interested, was to gather the support of the local fishermen. Right. 

Giulia: Not the general public, but the local fishermen. And so we had to discuss, like, okay, how do we do this? And again, going back to some of the issues that I shared with you before, especially on the environmental side, introducing a farm, right, would mean that these fishermen would have to increase efforts to catch wild octopuses and the prices would probably decrease because of the farming. So that's how, in a very nutshell, we managed to gather the support of the local fishermen because they don't want this practice in their state because it's going to disrupt their business. 

Amy: Thanks, Giulia. I think, as you say, you know, it's one of those episodes where I think we could talk for such a long time. Obviously, there's tons in the aquatic space that we maybe delved in further with in Doug Waley's episode. But just hearing more on specifically that octopus topic has been really interesting for me. You know, very like, niche and specific, but yeah, obviously an animal that we should care about and work towards preventing their farming. So thanks so much for sharing all of that information with us. 

Giulia: Yeah, no, thank you, guys. I thought this was just introduction. Don't we have another 10 hours ahead of us?

Amy: We wish, we wish. 

James: If you want that kind of content, you got 80,000 hours. They just released 4 hours about insects, so I think if you want the really intense.

Giulia: That's going to be nice. Okay, good to know. 

Amy: Have you got the stamina. Awesome. Well, just to wrap up then, I'd love to know, maybe aside from the Octopus news, obviously, something that you're grateful for or excited about recently. 

Giulia: Well, I've seen a lot of great news in the animal advocacy movement. And although obviously my focus in the past couple of years has been on aquatic animals more in general, I like to see progress when it comes to animal welfare protections in other jurisdictions. So, for example, the recent UK ban on live transport. Yeah. Just made me jump out of my seat. I was actually in Copenhagen at the World Federation for Animals General Assembly. That's when the news sort of came out. 

Giulia: And I don't know to me that I always talk with legislators, policymakers, or industry representatives, being surrounded by advocates who dedicate their lives and skills and time to advocate for all species, being able to celebrate with them such a big advancement and such big news just filled me up with energy and more fire to sort of keep advocating for even more neglected species and animals like octopus. 

James: Maybe I'm going to add some aquatic news because I think it's relevant to this episode. I don't know if people have seen, but both Tesco and Sainsbury's have released shrimp welfare commitments. So I think people estimate it's going to total 8 billion animals affected, which is kind of insane. And they won't be killed by ice slurry. They'll be electrically stunned, and there'll be eyestalk ablation- No, there won't be any eyestalk ablation now in the supply chain. So I think that's a very cool step from two very large retailers, and hopefully there's more to come. So congrats to the groups who worked on that. Do you have any recommendations you have to listen to, Giulia? In terms of notebooks, articles, other forms of content, they can either learn more about your campaign or octopuses or aquatic animals. 

Giulia: I just want to mention that we have a dedicated campaign on a website, octopus farming ban campaign of Aquatic Life Institute. You can find more than you could possibly need on our website, but also some external resources that I would recommend is The Soul of an Octopus, which is a very interesting book. Again, if you want to be fascinated, like I am, about these magnificent creatures, the Netflix documentary, My Octopus Teacher. I think a lot of folks are already familiar with it, although I want to mention that it does not address farming concerns. It's just another way to fall in love with these animals. And then, yeah, my colleague wrote a blog post on the Effective Altruism blog just to cover sort of the topic of octopus and everything that it entails. 

Giulia: So I think that's a great summary of everything I just blabbed about. 

Amy: Perfect. Thank you. And what about more involved in your work, specifically? So at Aquatic Life Institute or the alliance, do you need any volunteers or any specific places people can find you? 

Giulia: Again, I would encourage people that are interested to take action, to go to our campaign website page, because there is a section that says take action. So there's a lot of different opportunities based on your personalities. There is also, I think, a portal for artistic submissions from drawings, stories, just any type of creative piece. Yeah, we want to try and, you know, yeah. Open it up to any type of personality. If you're more of a policy nerd like me, I lead the Aquatic Animal Policy Focus group, which is a very small focus group dedicated to basically exploring opportunities for aquatic animal policy. The main topic we talk about is octopus most of the time, but there's plenty of other opportunities, like, you know, those international feedback that I was briefly talking about before. 

Giulia: If you sign up to our newsletter, that's where we post every opportunity to either work with us or volunteer with us. And actually, another important point that I should mention, going back to public awareness, there's also, I think, a kit for social media. So I suggest using that. Sorry, I'm a little bit of a boomer, so I don't really use social media. I try to stay active on LinkedIn so if you want to connect directly with me, I often talk about octopus, but more in general, aquatic animals intervention. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or reach out to me through my email. And last thing I want to mention is that we have the Aquatic Life conference on the 9th and 10th of September, so by the time the podcast is released, you can definitely go back and check the recordings. 

Amy: Well, thanks so much, Giulia. I know obviously working globally on a very complex species, I can imagine staying motivated in this role, in this space, you know, with policymakers who maybe aren't interested in what you have to say. I really admire that you have such a passion for this topic. You've obviously spoken like really passionately today about all of the work that you do. Particularly inspiring, especially when I'm assuming you dealt with many nos and rejections within your work on, as I say, such a complex topic. So thanks for your energy in the episode today. I've learned loads of, and I'm sure listeners will too. And yeah, please just continue with the amazing work that you do. 

Giulia: Yeah, well, thank you guys. And thank you also for the way you named your podcast because I think it's a huge advocacy per se, you know, making sure that more neglected animals and neglected species are given the attention and hopefully protection that they truly deserve. So yeah, I share your enthusiasm and I had a great time chatting with you too there you guys. 

James: Likewise. 

Amy: Thanks, Giulia.

James: Fun fact, it's also named after my cat Shrimp, who's right behind me for people who are watching on video. 

Giulia: Love this. 

James: Top secret. Anyone who's listened to the last minute of this episode. Anyway, thanks Giulia.