Fish farming has been increasing in the last decades. Although the current legislation on animal welfare of animals in production systems is applicable to all vertebrate species, including teleost fish, the knowledge on fish welfare is still very poor. In recent years, the study of animal welfare in other farmed vertebrates (i.e. mammals and birds) allowed a solid knowledge of the state of the animals and the minimal resources they need in production systems, which led to the implementation of good practice codes, guidelines and specific legislation on their maintenance in captivity. These studies have identified three core dimensions to the concept of animal welfare: (a) the health and biological functioning of animals; (b) suffering and the mental functioning of animals; (c) the nature of animals and the possibility for them to express in captivity the species-specific behavioural repertoire. Regarding fish the available studies mainly address biological health issues and the stress response, hence from the three pillars of the concept of animal welfare only the first one has been extensively studied, and an integration of the three dimensions is still lacking. The goal of this talk is to demonstrate that the concept of animal welfare is applicable to teleost fish, since recent data on nociception, cognition and social stress in fish suggest that they are sentient animals, and that fish welfare should be considered in human activities related to fish such as fish farming.
aquaculture; cognition; fish; nociception; stress; welfare
