Raising the bar for farmed Atlantic salmon welfare

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Raising the bar for farmed Atlantic salmon welfare

RSPCA Australia
Monday, 2 December 2024

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The RSPCA Approved Farming Scheme Standard for Farmed Atlantic Salmon has been updated. Here we talk you through why, what’s changed, and most importantly, what it means for the welfare of farmed Atlantic salmon in Tasmania.

Reviewing and updating the standards

Each of the animal-specific standards for the RSPCA Approved Farming Scheme undergoes an extensive scheduled review, roughly every five years.

(For example – the review of the Standard for chickens farmed for meat is currently underway – read here for more information).

That’s the case with the salmon Standard – with the previous version released in May 2020. Like with all of our other standard reviews, this review has followed our publicly available process.

But it’s worth remembering why we put such significant time and resources into reviewing the standards. If we want to improve animal welfare as much as possible through the RSPCA Approved Farming Scheme, it’s important that we continually raise the bar – by updating the Standard and taking into account the latest animal welfare science, new technologies, and what’s challenging yet possible to achieve in the Australian farming context.

And remember – salmon are one of the most intensively farmed animals in Australia. This is the whole reason we have a Standard for salmon – because here lies the greatest opportunity to improve animal welfare.

What’s changed?

The RSPCA Approved Standards are, and continue to be, publicly available. This is an important part of ensuring that the community knows and understand what the RSPCA Approved certification means – including what issues remain unresolved, even with the Standard.

The new Standard has improvements in a broad range of areas, including handling, space allowance, and managing wildlife. This includes:

Further requirements to how fish can be tagged as part of identification for selective breeding – a process that can cause pain and suffering
A stronger requirement for participation in and conformance with a third-party audited certification scheme that promotes best environmental practice – in recognition of the impact of salmon farming on the environment and the animal welfare issues this brings (the Standard continues to prohibit salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour because of water quality, including the risk of poor water quality as a result of environmental events, posing a risk to fish welfare)
Stricter requirements around antimicrobial usage and the requirement for an antimicrobial stewardship strategy
The requirement for a strategy to minimise the negative impact of harmful algal and/or jellyfish blooms
Doubling the minimum depth of marine pens (from 5m to 10m), allowing fish greater control over their preferred position in the water column
Stricter requirements for determining stocking density (the number of fish in a given volume of water), to take into account a range of factors including water temperature, water quality, and fish behaviour and condition.
Stricter fish handling requirements prior to stunning for slaughter.

The Standard also clearly sets out our expectations that the salmon industry prioritise research and development in a number of key areas which will inform the requirements in a future Standard:

The importance of rest and sleep for fish and the impact of light and darkness on this
The importance of enrichment and enrichment types for fish and how they can improve welfare outcomes

This is important because in addition to the explicit requirements in the Standard that a producer would have to meet to have certification, the Standard also makes it very clear where we expect the industry to go and what areas we expect them to invest in to improve animal welfare. It’s not just making a tangible difference for animal welfare right now, but ensuring this continues into the future and that we’re open and transparent about where we’re heading.

Managing wildlife

One of the most challenging areas when it comes to the welfare of farmed Atlantic salmon in Tasmania – and, understandably, the one that’s attracted the most public attention – is how to protect fish from predators (mostly seals).

Many farming systems, including land-based farming systems, have to manage incursions from predators in some way or another. But it’s a particular challenge when it comes to salmon farming and seals.

In this review of the Standard, we’ve placed even tighter restrictions on how wildlife interactions are managed, including further restrictions on cracker usage; the requirement for a site-specific wildlife management strategy; limiting the use of bird netting in the marine stage; and increased checking of pens to reduce predator entanglement risk.

But also, we want to see the salmon industry take this seriously, and invest in and prioritise research into other methods – because we know that, even though crackers don’t hit the seal directly and cause pain, they are still aversive to seals and rely on the fright/flight response to make seals swim out of the pen. Despite this, seals continue to be attracted to salmon as an irresistible food source and will often return to try again.

That’s why we’ve made it clear in the Standard that we intend to phase out cracker use in the next Standard, unless there is peer-reviewed published research to demonstrate that crackers are the preferred option when compared to alternatives.

This is a good example of how the RSPCA Approved Standard makes a tangible difference to animal welfare today, while clearly signalling to industry where we want to see things go. We know from 27 years of working across a range of species that the Standard, through reflecting a pathway of continuous improvement, drives real and meaningful change for the welfare of millions of animals every day. 

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Raising the bar for farmed Atlantic salmon welfare

Reviewing and updating the standards

What’s changed?

Managing wildlife

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