In the aquaculture industry, understanding any potentially real or perceived animal welfare risks is becoming increasingly important. Within animal welfare definitions, the freedom from stress or suffering when slaughtered will most likely be applied to fish in order to secure animal welfare as part of any current or future animal protection laws. In farm environments, the impacts of stress have been well documented in terms of growth, reproductive physiology, and the immunocompetence of fish in farm environments.
Despite being very important factors in a successful aquaculture operation, the aforementioned are production focussed, and it is important to remember that the final product of any aquaculture industry is not only a fish but a food item with appearance, flavour, texture and storage characteristics that compete with other items of food. Even though the production of a farmed fish can take up to 20,000 hours, the flesh and product quality attributes of the fish can be significantly impacted upon by high levels of harvest stress in the last hour.
With both the levels and types of stress varying during the harvest of farmed fish, we examined the effects of different types of harvest stress. During this presentation, we will be presenting the effects of stress on the quality attributes of farmed Australian Southern bluefin tuna in Japan and farmed barramundi in Singapore.