New York Just Voted to Ban Industrial Octopus Farming Before It Could Ever Begin

In the early hours of June 5, on the last day of the 2026 session, the New York State Assembly passed A.8043C, a bill banning industrial octopus farming, by a sweeping bipartisan vote of 129-13. It followed the Senate’s passage of the companion bill, S.7421B, by a vote of 55-5 just hours before. The legislation now heads to Governor Kathy Hochul’s desk, where her signature will make New York the first state on the East Coast—and one of the first jurisdictions anywhere in the world—to prohibit this practice before a single factory farm could open.

That timing is the whole point. This isn’t a fight to shut down an existing industry. It’s a fight to make sure the industry never gets a foothold here at all.

Why Octopus Farming Is a Threat Worth Heading Off

Octopus farming is a new and rapidly growing industry, driven largely by efforts like Spain-based Nueva Pescanova’s plans to breed over a million octopuses a year for slaughter. No commercial octopus farm has ever operated successfully and humanely, because none can.

Octopuses are solitary, highly intelligent animals with complex nervous systems spread across a central brain and eight arms, each capable of independent sensing and movement. They solve problems, use tools, recognize individual people, and show clear signs of curiosity and distress.

In 2021, the UK formally recognized them as sentient beings, and the 2024 New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness affirmed the same scientific consensus: octopuses are conscious animals capable of suffering and confining them in crowded industrial tanks is incompatible with their well-being. We’ve made the case against octopus farming before, and the more research comes out, the harder it is to argue otherwise.

The environmental case is just as strong. Farming octopuses for food requires several times their body weight in wild-caught fish to raise each animal, adding pressure to fisheries rather than relieving it. Industrial aquaculture operations also discharge concentrated nutrient pollution into surrounding waters, a real concern in a state that has already seen a dramatic rise in harmful algal blooms in recent years, and they create new pathways for disease to spread into wild marine populations.

Washington and California already banned octopus farming in 2024. With this vote, New York joins them, and becomes the first state in the East to do so, sending a signal that this fight isn't confined to one coast.

What the Bill Does

Sponsored by Senator Monica Martinez and Assembly Member Tony Simone, S.7421B/A.8043C is straightforward. Once signed, New York’s octopus farming ban will prohibit the aquaculture of any species of octopus for human consumption anywhere in New York State. It will carry civil penalties of up to $1,000 per day, per violation, enforced by the Department of Environmental Conservation.

Governor Hochul will have ten days to sign the bill once it’s delivered to her desk, and she has until the end of 2026 to act.

A Coalition Win, Years in the Making

This victory is the result of a multi-year campaign led by Woodstock Farm Sanctuary and Voters For Animal Rights (VFAR), with World Animal Protection US proud to work alongside them as part of the coalition pushing this bill across the finish line. The legislation moved through committee and onto the floor on the strength of thousands of constituent calls, emails, and petition signatures from New Yorkers who didn't want to wait until an octopus farm showed up in their backyard to do something about it.

Woodstock Farm Sanctuary and Voters For Animal Rights tracked this campaign closely from the start, warning early on about what was at stake if New York didn’t act before an industry took root. The lesson running through that coverage, and through years of fighting an entrenched industry after the fact—as advocates have done in court over New York’s last two foie gras farms—is that prevention is far easier than a years-long legal battle against an industry with money, jobs, and lobbyists behind it. Octopus farming doesn’t have any of that in New York yet. Now, thanks to this vote, it never will.

As a recent op-ed by the bill’s prime sponsor, Assembly Member Tony Simone, put it, New York had a rare opportunity to stop a form of animal cruelty before it ever started, and lawmakers took it. For anyone who wants to see exactly what they voted on, the bill itself, S.7421B, is short, direct, and worth a read.

What Comes Next

The bill still needs to be delivered to and signed by Governor Hochul before it becomes law. World Animal Protection US will continue working with our coalition partners to keep the pressure on until her signature makes this ban official.

For now, this is a moment to recognize what’s possible when organizations and everyday advocates work together long before a crisis forces their hand. Octopuses in New York will never know what industrial farming would have meant for them, and if you want a reminder of exactly why that matters, these are animals worth getting to know. That’s the win.