Atlantic salmon farmed in sea cages face welfare challenges from sea lice, crowding, handling stress, and disease. Improving welfare standards for farmed salmon represents a major opportunity to reduce suffering at scale.
Farmed Atlantic salmon face welfare challenges that span the entire production cycle. Sea lice cause chronic pain and skin damage. Crowding during treatments and handling causes acute stress and physical injury. High stocking densities limit natural swimming behavior. The scale of these welfare impacts — affecting hundreds of millions of fish annually — makes salmon welfare one of the most quantitatively significant animal welfare issues in food production. Norway progress on developing welfare indicators represents an important step toward outcome-based management, but global adoption of comparable standards is limited. Consumer demand for certified higher welfare salmon, combined with regulatory development in major producing nations, is the primary pathway to improvement.