Fish Welfare Improvements in Aquaculture (Fish Welfare Initiative)

This report contains an executive summary, which is reproduced below.

In recent years, fish welfare has been recognized as playing a crucial role in creating a more healthy, sustainable, and ethical world. Safeguarding fish welfare in global aquaculture helps preserve our oceans, buffer against disease risks, and improve the lives of billions of fish. Therefore, the improvement of aquaculture management practices is a key element in making the current food system less damaging and more aligned with the UN’s 2030 Development Goals.

However, making welfare improvements on fish farms can be complicated, as fish welfare needs are often unintuitive. They vary depending on numerous factors, and it is often difficult to identify the precise welfare issues affecting fish. The aim of this report is to give stakeholders in a less damaging food system the tools for overcoming each of these obstacles, and thus start to make an actionable plan towards improving fish welfare.

Section One of the report identifies three conditions necessary for properly improving fish welfare in aquaculture: first, a general understanding of the welfare issues faced by fish in farms; second, knowledge of the specifics surrounding the fish species, farming system, and local context being targeted; and third, a welfare assessment of specifically targeted fish in the farm environment. We believe that all stakeholders in fish welfare should have access to knowledge of these conditions, and this report aims to provide information and applicable tools concerning each.

Section Two of the report focuses on the next step after obtaining the three conditions outlined above: making welfare improvements. This section outlines actionable welfare improvements available for different aquaculture systems, life stages, and stakeholders.

Section Three applies the information from previous sections to Fish Welfare Initiative’s planned work for carp species (catla and rohu) in India. We outline contextual information on carp farming in India, assess welfare according to our farm visits and farm surveys, and review potential welfare improvements. From this analysis, we draw a preliminary conclusion as to which welfare improvements we should focus on to maximize our impact on fish, concluding that water quality is the most promising direction for our work.

Within India, our priority country used as a case study, traditional farming practices limit the farmers' ability to safeguard fish welfare, and there remains little information on the optimal conditions for the species they farm - Indian major carp. However, fairly affordable straightforward improvements to water quality can be made that drastically decrease the presence of stress responses in Indian major carp. This is not surprising, as poor water quality can impact fish for the entirety of their lives, leading to chronic stress. Fish Welfare Initiative’s preliminary conclusion is that water quality improvements seem to be the most promising direction for our operations (although they will likely need to be paired with training, better feeding management practices, or stocking density limits to safeguard benefits to fish welfare). The next step is to implement these water quality improvements on a small scale, where we will monitor how our improvements affect fish welfare outcomes. This conclusion is based on the specifics of Fish Welfare Initiative’s work, and so other stakeholders in fish welfare will need to apply their own context in order to properly address welfare for their targeted fish.

We hope that this report will help equip all stakeholders in fish welfare with the relevant knowledge to best address fish welfare in their context.