School of Biodiversity, One Health & Veterinary Medicine

Welfare of farmed fish

Several of the studies mentioned are aimed at improving the welfare of farmed fish, as well as increasing production efficiency. My interest in this topic grows naturally my research on the experience of individual fish within groups. I have written and spoken extensively on fish welfare and I am involved in several working parties aimed at protecting the welfare of farmed fish.

With colleagues in Glasgow, Norway, France and Poland, I am involved in international consortium to study the consequences for welfare of individual differences in risk-taking among farmed fish (funded by the EC through the SEAFOOD+ project) and to develop operational welfare indicators for use on working fish farms (funded by the EC through the BENEFISH project).  For example, we have recently shown that carp with different behavioural profiles show strikingly different stress responses (including different patterns of gene expression) to various aspects of husbandry practice.