Selective breeding programs for farmed Atlantic salmon increasingly incorporate health and welfare traits alongside growth and production characteristics, creating fish that are more robust and experience less disease.
Genetic selection for welfare-relevant traits in farmed salmon represents one of the most scalable and long-lasting welfare improvements possible in aquaculture. A disease-resistant salmon strain experiences less suffering from infection throughout its life than a susceptible strain regardless of management quality. The historical success of IPN resistance breeding — reducing a major cause of mortality and suffering with lasting genetic change — provides proof of concept. Expanding selection programs to include lice resistance, thermal tolerance, and stress reactivity has the potential to improve the welfare of billions of farmed salmon over generations. Welfare genetics is a complement to, not a substitute for, management improvements.