Antibiotic use in aquaculture raises both animal welfare and public health concerns. Understanding how to reduce antibiotic dependency improves fish welfare and protects human health.
Antibiotic overuse in aquaculture reflects an underlying welfare problem: fish farmed at excessive densities in poor water quality are immunocompromised and disease-prone. Antibiotics treat the symptom while the cause — inappropriate husbandry — continues. Norway demonstrates that alternative approaches work: aggressive vaccination, improved husbandry, reduced density and selective breeding for disease resistance have essentially eliminated antibiotic dependency in Norwegian salmon farming. Disease prevention through welfare improvement is the most sustainable approach for both fish welfare and public health. Fish that are crowded, stressed and immunocompromised suffer regardless of whether they are treated with antibiotics — the welfare objective is to prevent disease rather than simply treat it.