Farmed salmon and other species that escape into wild rivers pose welfare risks for both escapees and wild fish through competition, disease transmission, and hybridisation.
Escaped farmed fish face a welfare paradox: the wild environment they enter is one they are poorly equipped for after selection for captive conditions. Concurrently, wild fish suffer from the ecological disruption escapees cause. Containment engineering improvements, sterile fish production, and site siting regulations reduce escape incidents while addressing both individual and population-level welfare concerns.