Ensuring the welfare of fish is essential within the food supply chain, impacting ethical, economic, and environmental aspects. Despite this, integrating welfare considerations into fish production encounters various challenges. While international recommendations concentrate on transport and slaughter stages, they often establish only minimum standards, neglect species-specific requirements, and overlook broader aspects of the production process. Effectively addressing this issue necessitates the development, validation, and regular update of operational welfare indicators for fish. Additionally, establishing tailored standards for different species is imperative. This multidisciplinary approach integrates biological, veterinary, aquaculture, environmental, and social sciences to comprehensively address fish welfare in aquaculture. Practical assessment of fish welfare facilitates the implementation of enhanced farming practices, supported by training and monitoring initiatives.

The aim of this Research Topic is to empower stakeholders in the fish farming sector with tools to promote and implement ethical and sustainable practices, thereby advancing industry-wide fish welfare standards. This proposal advocates for utilizing scientific research to define and implement fish welfare standards customized for different species along the supply chain, while enhancing existing standards. Moreover, it emphasizes the economic benefits of improved fish welfare, such as increased productivity and competitive advantages, encouraging the industry to adopt sustainable practices. The primary goal is to refine the operational welfare indicators framework outlined by Pedrazzani et al. (2023), which introduced a protocol for assessing the welfare of Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) throughout their life cycle in aquaculture. This scientific progression aims to examine global researchers’ contributions, providing insights into new thresholds across diverse scenarios and perspectives, proposing additional indicators, suggesting new protocols for other commercially significant fish species, and offering approaches to transfer this scientific knowledge into farming practices.

In defining the scope of this Research Topic, we invite contributors to explore new propositions concerning welfare indicators, thresholds, and additional fish species inclusion. It is crucial to maintain the four categories (environmental, health, nutritional, and behavioral) and three-score system (1=ideal, 2=tolerable, and 3=critical) as outlined in existing frameworks to enable timely updates of freely available assessment tools. An essential reference article for this topic is available at https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2023.1268396/full.

We welcome submissions of original research, reviews, case studies, and perspectives to enhance our understanding of methods for assessing species welfare in aquaculture and facilitate knowledge transfer into farm practices. We stress the importance of technological tools in advancing fish welfare standards for monitoring and improving fish welfare on farms. Encouraging interdisciplinary approaches, we aim to educate stakeholders and promote the widespread adoption of these standards. Additionally, we invite contributions providing a global perspective on fish welfare in aquaculture, addressing regional challenges, adapting standards to diverse regulatory environments, and presenting case studies from aquaculture settings.

Topic Editors Murilo Quintiliano and Sara Barrento are employed by FAI Farms. All other Topic Editors declare no competing interests with regards to the Research Topic subject.

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Advancing Operational Welfare Indicators in Fish Farming