How Atlantic cod farming has developed and what welfare considerations arise when farming one of the world's most important commercial fish species.
The expansion of Atlantic cod aquaculture represents both a conservation opportunity — reducing pressure on wild stocks — and a new set of welfare responsibilities. Cod are active, social fish that show measurable responses to environmental conditions including crowding, light levels, and water quality. The welfare challenges of cod farming are substantive: high stocking densities, high rates of injury from conspecific aggression, and harvest methods that have not been optimised for humane outcomes. As cod farming grows, it is essential that the industry learns from the welfare mistakes made in earlier salmon aquaculture development rather than repeating them at the cost of billions of individual fish.