How Aquaculture Is Following the Lead of Animal Researchers to Improve Fish Welfare

In my third year of university I took a course, Physiology of Marine Animals, that introduced us to the adaptations of organisms that enable them to live in the marine environment. A key component of this course was learning about the standard laboratory techniques researchers use to study these animals.

For a bright eyed and bushy tailed marine biology student, this was a dream come true. Actual hands-on experience with real marine animals – no class could be better than that!

Now most of these labs dealt with dissections of dead animals or using invertebrates like C. elegans (a common research specimen because there are no ethical rules governing its use). However, I distinctly remember one lab where we had to remove blood from a green crab (Carcinus maenas) to study its ability to osmoregulate at various salinity concentrations.  At the time, I was worried I would stick the needle in the wrong spot, but I never really stopped to consider the ethical and moral implications of our entire class sticking needles in crabs as a learning experience.

But others have. In fact, using animals in research can be quite controversial. And people’s perception of what is ethical changes significantly depending on the choice of animal, the purpose of the research and the level of pain and suffering the animal will endure.

Research Standards

But what about the crabs? Was it ethical to use them in my class?  Universities have some of the most rigorous standards and use of animals in classrooms and research projects must go through significant peer-review and be approved by a dedicated animal welfare committee.

Not only that but taking blood from crustaceans is a simple and minor procedure that with good direction can be done with minimum stress caused to the animal. And it is important to teach future scientists how to properly execute common lab procedures so they can reduce and prevent harm in their future work.

This can be a sensitive topic and different people have different comfort levels for what is acceptable. Ethics committees have a difficult job determining where to draw the line and at what point do harm and stress to animals outweigh the benefits. They rely on advice from the scientific community, ensure that all proposals are peer-reviewed by experts in the field and involve an array of stakeholders, including technicians, veterinarians, students and scientists to ensure a variety of viewpoints are considered.

Standards for Food Production

Animal ethics committees are involved in other areas as well, such as the food production industry. Producers of beef, pork, chicken and fish all have their own ethics protocols to ensure acceptable rearing conditions of livestock. Intensive agriculture has been around for hundreds of years and as new information becomes available, standards of care are updated.

In aquaculture, these standards are relatively new developments as intensive operations, especially in the open ocean, have grown in the last few decades. Not only that but there is an overall shift in the industry to how welfare is defined.

Typically, only physical health and what can be physically measured has been considered. However, organizations such as the Animal Welfare Committee (AWC) have described the definitions for animal welfare on farms and include the freedom from fear and distress as a condition for good welfare. This requires that living conditions and treatments must reduce and eliminate procedures that can cause mental suffering.

Welfare and mental suffering are not measured easily, there is not any measurement that can be taken to determine the wellbeing of fish. Instead many parameters must be considered. A new white paper I wrote, “Fish Stress and Welfare in Aquaculture,” examines this more closely and looks at some of the novel ways that farm operators are reducing stress in their fish stocks.

While researchers continue to debate whether fish have the ability to suffer and experience mental distress, improvements in technology and new research allow us to derive greater insights into the wellbeing of farmed fish.