About Us - health management
intro | market | health | environmental control
Improving health management
Maintaining healthy stocks is a critical factor for ensuring the financial viability of any fish farm. Beside direct losses from mortality, poor health can also affect product quality, and is detrimental for fish welfare. Good health management is therefore an essential skill for all fish farmers. Key elements include:
A myxosporean parasite in kidney tissue -
requires prevention through environmental controls
- Maintenance of good environmental conditions
- Ensuring good nutritional standards
- Reducing fish stress and risk of physical injuries
- Prevention of infectious agents entering the fish farm
- Reduction of infectious agents within the aquaculture system
- Enhancing the protection of the stock against infectious agents through vaccines and immunostimulants
- Rapid diagnosis and treatment when disease outbreaks occur
In practice however, there are many difficulties in implementing these principles, and sometimes hard financial calculations to be made when investing in equipment or vaccines where the economic benefit depends on accurate assessments of risk, which are not always easy. There are also an increasing number of regulatory requirements and health management related standards that are part of wider certification schemes. Insurance cover is also highly dependent on health management practices and proper risk assessments.
Vaccinating fish against common bacterial diseases
The Aquaculture Innovation Network is supporting improvements to health management through the organisation of courses in Poland and Estonia, and will also be providing information and guidance through the web site. Through the partnering and knowledge base tools we are keen to promote new technologies with proven benefits for health management, from diagnostic test kits, through vaccines, nutritionals and therapeutants, to equipment for improving environmental conditions or reducing handling stress, or methods for improving risk assessment and management.
