What is the OCTO law? How does it help octopuses?

2 Min. read

This week, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 3162 – also known as the “California Oppose Cruelty to Octopuses (OCTO) Act” – into law. PETA supported the bill in its early stages, and groups like Social Compassion in Legislation and the Animal Legal Defense Fund worked hard to build support for it.

The OCTO Act will make it illegal for anyone in California to engage in aquaculture or farming of octopus for human consumption.

It also prohibits business owners and operators from knowingly selling octopuses that come from octopus farms.

Octopuses are intelligent, complex and fascinating animals

Octopuses feel joy and excitement, but also pain and fear.

They are extremely intelligent and can do the following:

• Use shells for protection
• Steal food from traps set by fishermen
• Escape from aquariums
• Decorate their houses

They communicate with each other through complex color changes and flashes that humans still don't fully understand.

Keeping octopuses on farms would lead to unnatural aggression, cannibalism, injury and death as they would fight and struggle to escape.

In addition, workers slaughtered octopuses at the end of their miserable lives, inflicting terror and pain on them by cutting open their brains or hitting their heads.

You can help prevent such cruelty by never eating octopus.

Help Kraken

A life-saving bipartisan bill, Senate Bill 4810, was recently introduced in Congress. The Combating the Cultivation and Trade of Octopuses Produced Through Unethical Strategies (OCTOPUS) Act would ban commercial octopus farming in the United States and ban the importation of live or dead farmed octopuses (or their meat or derivatives) from abroad.

If you are a US resident, please urge your Senator to co-sponsor the powerful OCTOPUS Act:

Do you live somewhere else in the world?

Note: PETA supports animal rights, rejects all forms of animal exploitation, and educates the public about these issues. PETA does not participate, directly or indirectly, in any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office or any political party.