Assessment - On-farm Assessment
There is a growing demand for systems for on-farm welfare assessment in all areas of livestock production. The concept of welfare assessment of fish farms is still in its infancy although developments in welfare assessment in terrestrial livestock production systems offer a variety of different approaches (e.g. Fregonesi & Leaver, 2001; Janczak et al. 2003; Spoolder et al. 2003; Dawkins et al. 2004). On-farm welfare assessment of UK fish farms is presently very limited, with regulatory inspections focusing on the control of infectious diseases rather than monitoring or safeguarding welfare per se.
One of the driving forces behind the promotion of fish welfare in the UK is the increasing demands made by supermarket retailers on their suppliers. It is now common-place for supermarkets to conduct their own farm audits, which place an increasing emphasis on farmers to demonstrate that fish welfare is being safeguarded. The welfare policy of supermarkets ultimately reflects a consumer concern over the ethics of livestock production (Cooke, 2001). However, adopting a policy that places an over reliance on self-regulation runs the risk of welfare criteria being determined on the basis of emotive responses to the demands of animal welfare pressure groups rather than on a scientific basis.
Most studies that have attempted to assess welfare on commercial fish farms have focused on individual aspects of welfare such as fin condition (St-Hilaire et al. 2006; Bosakowski & Wagner, 1994), with the exception being Turnbull et al. (2005) who measured a number of different parameters to assess welfare in cage-reared Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). The emergence of software packages capable of carrying out complex multi-level analysis presents a huge range of opportunities for exploring relationships between welfare indicators and potential risk factors (e.g. husbandry measures, water quality, stocking density etc.) in a way that was before limited to a handful of epidemiologists.