Appendix 12 – Animal Health and Welfare

This Appendix details the requirements for Health and Welfare training, monitoring, ablation-free sourcing and permitted stunning method usage, and methodologies to calculate the metrics on mortalities, antibiotic load and stocking density under Principle 4.

12.1 Introduction

Aquatic animal health and welfare is highly context-specific, given the diversity of species and culture systems. This variability highlights the importance of adjusted approaches within the ASC Farm Standard, as maintaining health and welfare is key to ensuring sustainable and ethical aquaculture practices. To address this complexity, the tables below and methodologies outline requirements that must be implemented according to the specific scenarios and needs of different species and systems.

12.2 Training requirements

Table 1 below outlines the requirements for basic and advanced aquatic animal health and welfare training.

Table 1. Aquatic animal Health and Welfare Training Requirements

12.3 Water Quality Monitoring Requirements

Table 2 below outlines the water quality monitoring requirements for fish culture (including cleaner fish) in the various culture systems, water types and during live transport. Table 3 below outlines the water quality monitoring requirements for crustacean culture in the various culture systems and water types.

Table 2. Water quality monitoring requirements for fish culture and live transport (including cleaner fish) as required by Indicators 4.1.1.10.1, 4.1.1.26.1, 4.1.2.10, 4.1.2.24.

Table 3. Water quality monitoring requirements for crustacean culture as required by Indicator 4.2.1.8.1

12.4 Ablation-free requirements

Table 4 below outlines the requirements for UoCs culturing Penaeus vannamei and Penaeus monodon to progress towards sourcing entirely from ablation-free female broodstock.

Table 4. Sourcing requirements for UoCs culturing Penaeus vannamei and Penaeus monodon, as required by Indicator 4.2.1.13.

12.5 Permitted stunning methods

Table 5 below outlines the permitted stunning methods and usage requirements for UoCs for the various fish species.

Table 5. Species-specific permitted stunning methods and usage requirements for UoCs, as required by Indicators 4.1.3.4 and 4.1.3.12

12.6 Methodologies

The methodologies below outline the formulae to calculate the metrics on mortalities, survival rates, antibiotic load and stocking density under Principle 4.

12.6.1

The mortality rate and real percentage mortality is calculated for each species in production at each site, as required by Indicator 4.1.1.6.

The mortality rate is calculated as the observed mortality count as a percentage of the stocking count:

$\text{Mortality rate}(\%)=\frac{\text{observed mortality count}(\#\mathrm{animals})}{\text{stocking count}(\#\mathrm{animals})}*100$

The real percentage mortality is calculated as the difference between stocked and harvested animals divided by the stocked animals:

$\text{Real percentage mortality}(\%)=\frac{\left(\text{stocking count}\right(\#\mathrm{animals})-\text{harvest count}(\#\mathrm{animals}\left)\right)}{\text{stocking count}(\#\mathrm{animals})}*100$

The survival rate for crustaceans is calculated for each species in production at each site, as required by Indicator 4.2.1.4.

The survival rate is calculated as the harvest count as a percentage of the stocking count:

$\text{Survival rate}(\%)=\frac{\text{harvest count}(\#\mathrm{animals})}{\text{stocking count}(\#\mathrm{animals})}*100$

12.6.2 The formula below outlines the methodology for antibiotic load calculation, as required by Indicator 4.4.16.

The antibiotic load is calculated for each species in production at each site and is the total amount of active component used from all applied antibiotics used divided by the net production volume.

$\text{Antibiotic load}\left({\text{kg tonne}}^{-1}\right)=\frac{\text{total mass of active component}\left(\mathrm{kg}\right)}{\text{net production}\left(\mathrm{tonnes}\right)}$

12.6.3 The formulae below outline the methodologies for stocking density calculation, as required by Indicators 4.1.1.12, 4.1.1.27, and 4.2.1.11.

The UoC shall calculate stocking densities at the highest stocked volume or highest stocking count.

Depending on the species in production, the stocking density is reported as biomass per surface area (kg/m²), biomass per water volume (kg/m³) or number of aquatic animals per surface area (# aquatic animals/m²):

$\text{stocking density}\left(\frac{\mathrm{kg}}{m^2}\right)=\frac{\text{stocked production}\left(\mathrm{kg}\right)}{\text{water surface area}\left(m^2\right)}$

$\text{stocking density}\left(\frac{\mathrm{kg}}{m^3}\right)=\frac{\text{stocked production}\left(\mathrm{kg}\right)}{\text{water volume}\left(m^3\right)}$

$\text{stocking density}\left(\frac{\#\mathrm{animals}}{m^2}\right)=\frac{\text{stocking count}(\#\mathrm{animals})}{\text{water surface area}\left(m^2\right)}$

The water surface area of circular production units can be calculated as follows:

$\text{surface area}\left(m^2\right)=\pi \times {\mathrm{radius}}^2\left(m\right)\times \#\text{production units}$

Where radius is calculated as:

$\mathrm{radius}\left(m\right)=\frac{\mathrm{diameter}\left(m\right)}{2}$

The water surface area for rectangular production units can be calculated as follows:

$\text{surface area}\left(m^2\right)=\mathrm{length}\left(m\right)\times \mathrm{width}\left(m\right)\times \#\text{production units}$

The water volume can be calculated by multiplying the surface area with the height of the production units for circular and rectangular production units, respectively:

$\text{water volume}\left(m^3\right)=\pi \times {\mathrm{radius}}^2\left(m\right)\times \mathrm{height}\left(m\right)\times \#\text{production units}$

$\text{water volume}\left(m^3\right)=\mathrm{length}\left(m\right)\times \mathrm{width}\left(m\right)\times \mathrm{height}\left(m\right)\times \#\text{production units}$