I'm all for a general raising of the bar with regards to fish welfare. However, I do believe that there's a fish welfare product arms race going on. Naturally, the various tackle manufacturers seem to be only too happy to go along with it. I firmly recall my early days of carping, where almost no one had anything resembling an unhooking mat. Soft vegetation or a canvas/poly sheet was about as good as it got. However, I don't recall seeing any greater level of casualties, fatal or non-fatal.
The next step amongst the carpers was the use of fairly basic covered foam mats. Things have progressed steadily since then. I now own a mat that is thicker than plenty of mattresses I've slept on, it's not far off the same size too. An awful lot of the time, the dimensions are fairly laughable as, sadly, I'll probably never come close to filling it. Similar can be said for many of the nets out there. We've got to the pitch where the standard, and often insisted upon, size is 42". On many venues this is simply way more than is really necessary. I'd also question the depth of many nets on the market. I see a few too many fish dragged across gravel due to excessively deep nets and overly short landing net poles.
I do carry one of the fishy antiseptic sets, though I rarely find that I need to use it. I'll often use nets I believe are appropriate for the fishery concerned (unless the rules insist) rather than sticking just to a standard 42" minimum with 6' pole. I also have poles much longer than the usual 6'. There are so many situations when 6' is just not adequate and fish welfar is compromised if that's all you've got available.
The one thing I've yet to be persuaded over are the merits of carp cradles. In some respects they are excellent. However, since seeing a fish dropped on one of the support bars, and dying as a result, I have reservations. Don't get me wrong, dropping a fish is never going to be good, but I suspect the fish would have survived the same drop onto a flat padded mat.
Ultimately, I do think that there are more than a few folk that seem to forget that the ultimate aim of angling is to stick hooks in fish. I'm also not keen on imposed handling codes or fisheries specifying certan makes/models of equipment. What does actually surprise me these days is that so few fisheries supply their own nets/mats/cradles etc for the use of visiting anglers. I believe that would be beneficial in a few ways, not least that their minimums are met, but also for disease prevention.