Qualitative Behavioral Assessment in Juvenile Farmed Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar): Potential for On-Farm Welfare Assessment
There is a growing scientific and legislative consensus that fish are sentient, and therefore have the capacity to experience pain and suffering. The assessment of the welfare of farmed fish is challenging due to the aquatic environment and the number of animals housed together. However, with increa...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:8453064 2023-05-15T15:32:54+02:00 Qualitative Behavioral Assessment in Juvenile Farmed Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar): Potential for On-Farm Welfare Assessment Jarvis, Susan Ellis, Maureen A. Turnbull, James F. Rey Planellas, Sonia Wemelsfelder, Francoise 2021-09-07 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8453064/ https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2021.702783 en eng Frontiers Media S.A. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8453064/ http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2021.702783 Copyright © 2021 Jarvis, Ellis, Turnbull, Rey Planellas and Wemelsfelder. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. CC-BY Front Vet Sci Veterinary Science Text 2021 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2021.702783 2021-09-26T00:37:16Z There is a growing scientific and legislative consensus that fish are sentient, and therefore have the capacity to experience pain and suffering. The assessment of the welfare of farmed fish is challenging due to the aquatic environment and the number of animals housed together. However, with increasing global production and intensification of aquaculture comes greater impetus for developing effective tools which are suitable for the aquatic environment to assess the emotional experience and welfare of farmed fish. This study therefore aimed to investigate the use of Qualitative Behavioral Assessment (QBA), originally developed for terrestrial farmed animals, in farmed salmon and evaluate its potential for use as a welfare monitoring tool. QBA is a “whole animal” approach based on the description and quantification of the expressive qualities of an animal's dynamic style of behaving, using descriptors such as relaxed, agitated, lethargic, or confident. A list of 20 qualitative descriptors was generated by fish farmers after viewing video-footage showing behavior expressions representative of the full repertoire of salmon in this context. A separate, non-experienced group of 10 observers subsequently watched 25 video clips of farmed salmon, and scored the 20 descriptors for each clip using a Visual Analog Scale (VAS). To assess intra-observer reliability each observer viewed the same 25 video clips twice, in two sessions 10 days apart, with the second clip set presented in a different order. The observers were unaware that the two sets of video clips were identical. Data were analyzed using Principal Component (PC) Analysis (correlation matrix, no rotation), revealing four dimensions that together explained 79% of the variation between video clips, with PC1 (Tense/anxious/skittish—Calm/mellow/relaxed) explaining the greatest percentage of variation (56%). PC1 was the only dimension to show acceptable inter- and intra-observer reliability, and mean PC1 scores correlated significantly to durations of slow and ... Text Atlantic salmon Salmo salar PubMed Central (PMC) Frontiers in Veterinary Science 8 |
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Veterinary Science Jarvis, Susan Ellis, Maureen A. Turnbull, James F. Rey Planellas, Sonia Wemelsfelder, Francoise Qualitative Behavioral Assessment in Juvenile Farmed Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar): Potential for On-Farm Welfare Assessment |
topic_facet |
Veterinary Science |
description |
There is a growing scientific and legislative consensus that fish are sentient, and therefore have the capacity to experience pain and suffering. The assessment of the welfare of farmed fish is challenging due to the aquatic environment and the number of animals housed together. However, with increasing global production and intensification of aquaculture comes greater impetus for developing effective tools which are suitable for the aquatic environment to assess the emotional experience and welfare of farmed fish. This study therefore aimed to investigate the use of Qualitative Behavioral Assessment (QBA), originally developed for terrestrial farmed animals, in farmed salmon and evaluate its potential for use as a welfare monitoring tool. QBA is a “whole animal” approach based on the description and quantification of the expressive qualities of an animal's dynamic style of behaving, using descriptors such as relaxed, agitated, lethargic, or confident. A list of 20 qualitative descriptors was generated by fish farmers after viewing video-footage showing behavior expressions representative of the full repertoire of salmon in this context. A separate, non-experienced group of 10 observers subsequently watched 25 video clips of farmed salmon, and scored the 20 descriptors for each clip using a Visual Analog Scale (VAS). To assess intra-observer reliability each observer viewed the same 25 video clips twice, in two sessions 10 days apart, with the second clip set presented in a different order. The observers were unaware that the two sets of video clips were identical. Data were analyzed using Principal Component (PC) Analysis (correlation matrix, no rotation), revealing four dimensions that together explained 79% of the variation between video clips, with PC1 (Tense/anxious/skittish—Calm/mellow/relaxed) explaining the greatest percentage of variation (56%). PC1 was the only dimension to show acceptable inter- and intra-observer reliability, and mean PC1 scores correlated significantly to durations of slow and ... |
format |
Text |
author |
Jarvis, Susan Ellis, Maureen A. Turnbull, James F. Rey Planellas, Sonia Wemelsfelder, Francoise |
author_facet |
Jarvis, Susan Ellis, Maureen A. Turnbull, James F. Rey Planellas, Sonia Wemelsfelder, Francoise |
author_sort |
Jarvis, Susan |
title |
Qualitative Behavioral Assessment in Juvenile Farmed Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar): Potential for On-Farm Welfare Assessment |
title_short |
Qualitative Behavioral Assessment in Juvenile Farmed Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar): Potential for On-Farm Welfare Assessment |
title_full |
Qualitative Behavioral Assessment in Juvenile Farmed Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar): Potential for On-Farm Welfare Assessment |
title_fullStr |
Qualitative Behavioral Assessment in Juvenile Farmed Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar): Potential for On-Farm Welfare Assessment |
title_full_unstemmed |
Qualitative Behavioral Assessment in Juvenile Farmed Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar): Potential for On-Farm Welfare Assessment |
title_sort |
qualitative behavioral assessment in juvenile farmed atlantic salmon (salmo salar): potential for on-farm welfare assessment |
publisher |
Frontiers Media S.A. |
publishDate |
2021 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8453064/ https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2021.702783 |
genre |
Atlantic salmon Salmo salar |
genre_facet |
Atlantic salmon Salmo salar |
op_source |
Front Vet Sci |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8453064/ http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2021.702783 |
op_rights |
Copyright © 2021 Jarvis, Ellis, Turnbull, Rey Planellas and Wemelsfelder. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2021.702783 |
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Frontiers in Veterinary Science |
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8 |
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