Fish Welfare Project

Animal welfare, including the welfare of farmed aquatic animal, is increasingly considered as a key factor in defining ‘responsible’ production and determining the social acceptability of animal production system. The quality of products coming from these systems is also increasingly judged based on welfare considerations. 

The main objective of this ASC project is to expand the current indicators on fish health and welfare in ASC’s existing standards to a more comprehensive set of best practice indicators across all species currently within scope of ASC’s Standards. This will be based on extensive recent research in this area and expertise from across relevant sectors. The indicators developed as a result of the ASC’s Fish Welfare project are embedded within the aligned ASC Farm Standard currently in development with the creation of a brand new principle related to animal health and welfare – Principle 4 

ASC launched the ‘Fish Welfare’ project with an initial stakeholder consultation in 2019 (September – October 2019), which was followed by a second and third stakeholder consultation in September – October 2021 and 2022 respectively. This initial phase of the project saw the development of a set of indicators covering fish welfare, with an especial focus on finfish. These indicators were created in collaboration with a technical working group (TWG) of fish welfare experts. During the second phase of the project ASC took the initial work one step further and developed a set of indicators to cover shrimp and cleaner fish health and welfare in detail. Once again this was done with the support of two TWGs of experts, one on shrimp and one on cleaner fish. T These developed indicators went through the final round of stakeholder consultation, along with the entire ASC Farm Standard, in April 2024.

Contact person: Maria Filipa Castanheira – Standards Coordinator- Fish Welfare