Rainbow trout aquaculture faces significant disease challenges including bacterial kidney disease and infectious salmon anemia, and welfare-focused management reduces disease burden and fish suffering.
Trout farming disease management is a welfare and sustainability challenge simultaneously. Disease outbreaks cause acute suffering in affected fish and can eliminate entire year classes. The welfare response - early detection, humane euthanasia of severely affected individuals, and vaccination rather than reactive antibiotic treatment - is also the economically rational response. Climate change is increasing disease pressure through warming water temperatures.