6 Minute English from BBCLearningEnglish.com

Hello, this is 6 Minute English from BBCLearningEnglish. I'm Neil and I'm Beth.

Beth, what do you think about when I say the word octopus?

Well, I know they're intelligent, they can change colour to hide in their surroundings

and of course they have eight arms that I have to admit. I also think about how they taste delicious.

Yeah, I think that too, as do plenty of other people. Octopus is most commonly eaten in South Korea,

Spain, Portugal and Japan, where they can't get enough of that umami flavour.

Umami is one of the five basic tastes and is a savory flavour.

Until recently octopus has only been caught in the wild, but now a Spanish multinational company has announced it will be ready to sell farmed octopus soon,

which campaigners have described as ethically and ecologically unjustified.

This is because octopuses are sentient, an adjective describing a thing that experiences feelings like pleasure and pain.

Humans and many other animals like pigs, monkeys and birds are also sentient.

So is it okay to farm octopus when they have been shown to experience feelings?

In this programme we'll be discussing whether farming octopus can ever be ethical and as usual we'll be learning some useful new vocabulary as well.

But first, I have a question for you Beth. Octopuses are known for their ability to problem solve and when kept in tanks have been known to escape.

But where did Inky the octopus go when he broke out of his tank at the New Zealand National Aquarium in 2016?

Was it A, down a drain into the Pacific Ocean? B, to the tank of a female octopus or C to the aquarium carpark?

I'll guess he went to the tank of a female octopus.

Okay Beth, I'll reveal the answer later in the programme.

In many countries it's not easy to find octopus in shops, but if plans for farmed octopus go ahead, you're much more likely to see it in the supermarket.

Claire Marshall, who's been reporting on the octopus farm story since 2019, explains why octopuses have not been farmed before, as she told BBC World Service programme The Food Chain.

They've got an incredibly complex life cycle and its scientists have been sort of working feverishly to try to close that life cycle, particularly in Mexico and Japan and obviously in Spain.

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