Ethics & Welfare
Researchers on the Adamstuen campus are working on the welfare aspects and causal factors of a number of diseases, including cataract, post-immunisation peritonitis, skeletal malformations and skin ulcers. Ethical aspects of aquaculture production have also been addressed by the Norwegian Ministry of Agriculture's Council for Animal Ethics.
Animal welfare is about an animal’s quality of life, while ethics deals with what is good and right in life Animal ethics, thus, deals with what is a (sufficiently) good animal life and what is correct human action in relation to animals. A lack of elaborated welfare principles based in ethics, and understanding of how these may apply to aquatic animal management and aquaculture, complicates the development of standard welfare practices. Primary to a “fish ethics” is the question of whether aquatic cold-blooded animals should be given any welfare considerations at all. Sentience, the higher-level cognitive ability of animals to perceive and be emotionally conscious of comforts and discomforts, is usually seen as a prerequisite for considering animal welfare. Using neuroanatomy, neurophysiology and behaviour, recent publications speculate that finfish may be sentient; however, it is disputed. Understanding aquatic invertebrate sentience is confounded because many invertebrates appear to lack the neural structures and functions to be sentient, although certain cephalopods (some octopuses and squid) appear to have highly developed neural systems and complex behaviours suggestive of sentience. If this is so, these beings will count among the “moral objects” to which humans have ethical obligations in terms of welfare considerations. Another question is what ‘welfare’ means in relation to poikilothermic aquatic animals. Aquatic animal welfare may utilize approaches used in terrestrial animals that emphasize: optimal biological functioning as essential for ensuring animal welfare; the ability of the animal to behave as they do in nature; and, that animals should have positive emotional experiences. Currently biological functioning has most often provided the easiest measurable and understood welfare indicators, and health and production measures have provide valuable guidance and criteria for welfare. The study of fish ethology may yield further important contributions to the understanding of fish welfare. One solution may be to develop welfare indicators; but the ethical question then becomes one of: when are indices strong enough to recommend action? Here ethics may provide tools to assist in answering this and similar value-related questions. However, other issues will also affect the future approaches to aquatic animal welfare including the concept of animal rights or the notion that animals have a value in themselves (an approach suggested in the forthcoming Norwegian animal welfare legislation). Further influences come from legislative and regulatory imperatives; the public’s perception of aquatic animal husbandry practices; and, current public morays. Balancing these with the ability of aquatic animal industries to implement practical welfare practices, while continuing to remain economically viable as the world’s largest source of animal protein and apply justifiable approaches to aquatic animal welfare, is going to be a challenge. In addition, aquatic animals encompass extremely diverse, divergent and distantly related taxonomic groups (from phyla to species) with many-fold greater numbers of highly adapted species. There is therefore an imperative need for in-depth science behind poikilothermic animal sentience; understanding their natural behaviours; assessing the impact of management on their welfare. In addition, new knowledge that may classify aquatic poikilothermic species as sentient demands elaborated ethical principles and of how these ethical principles should be applied in aquaculture as well as in fisheries and recreational fishing, for example as poikilothermic animal welfare standards. |
A number of non-infectious diseases in today's intensive fish farming may be classified as production-related or husbandry diseases.In addition to the economic losses, these diseases can have a major impact on the individual's welfare. Our present knowledge of pain perception and welfare indicators in fish is however limited.