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Thanks for sharing, though I have to say I’m a little sceptical of this line of thought.

If we’re considering our Solar System, I expect almost all aquaculture (and other animal farming) to remain on Earth compared to other planets, indefinitely.

In the short-run this is because I expect at all self-sustaining settlements inhabited by humans beyond Earth to be very difficult and kind of pointless. Every last gram of payload will have to be justified, and water will be scarce and valuable. If there are any more calorie-efficient ways to grow or make food, compared to farming animals, then at least initially I don’t see how there would be animal farming.

And then if (say) a city on Mars really does become advanced enough to justify animal farming, I would expect at that point we’d have bioreactors to grow the animal product directly, without the energy wastage of movement, metabolism, and growing a brain and other discarded organs.^[1]

I also think this applies to the very long-run, beyond our Solar System. I personally struggle to picture a civilisation advanced enough to settle new stars, but primitive enough to choose to raise and slaughter animals. Not even “primitive” in a moral sense; more like technologically inept in this very specific way!

I also think there needs to be a specific mechanism of lock-in, in order to think that the decision to farm animals off-Earth (or deliberately choosing not to) should strongly influence long-run treatment of animals. I’d expect the more important factor is humanity’s general attitudes to and treatment of animals.

I do buy that there would be something symbolically significant about the relevant actors explicitly choosing not to farm animals off-Earth, though, that could resonate a lot (including for animal conditions back on Earth).

(This comment might also be partly relevant)

1. ^

   Honestly I think it’s notable how many startups and even academic projects get funding based on claims that they’re building some component of a mission to Mars or the Moon, based on assumptions which strike me as completely wild and basically made-up.

If you want a more detailed take on these issues than a Guardian article can provide, I would attend the annual Space Ecology Workshop. It’s an annual, free event for academic and industry experts to discuss the future of human space exploration and settlement. The team is really nice and might be open to adding a session on welfare /​ ethics of commercial farming in space.

Researchers at the Space Analog for the Moon & Mars at Biosphere 2 would also probably have some interesting takes. Most of their relevant work has focused on plant ecology, but questions about potential alternative sources definitely came up over the years. The project in this article is one of many different research pathways on human nutrition in space, most of which won’t end up happening.

I used to volunteer at Biosphere 2 when I lived in Tucson and like to stay in the loop, but this is not my current field at all.