Monitoring the welfare of Nile tilapia

September, 2023

FAI have been involved in a recent study evaluating the welfare of Nile tilapia throughout their life cycle – from reproduction to slaughter.

A comprehensive literature review was conducted to define precise welfare indicators and corresponding reference values for each stage of tilapia cultivation. This helped establish a methodology to identify welfare indicators closely aligned with the principles of animal freedoms defined by the Farm Animal Council (environmental, health, nutritional, behavioural, and psychological).

Is part of this research a laboratory experiment was also carried out to validate selected health indicators and assessments were made as to how practical these health indicators would be to monitor on farms.

The overall findings from the study have now been translated into a practical tool for tilapia farmers in the FAI Tilapia Welfare App. This enables farmers to score their production practices and performances against welfare indicators to identify areas of improvement.

You can read the study in full here.