Health and welfare

Good fish health is important?

Good fish health is a prerequisite for ensuring a profitable aquaculture industry and good quality products. Documented absence of serious pathogens, is a precondition for Icelandic market access and for the export of aquaculture products.

How do fish diseases occur?

Since fish farming is a relatively new form of animal husbandry, new diseases will gradually be experienced in farmed fish populations. Variety of pathogens exist in wild fish populations along our coastline, rivers and lakes, generally without apparent adverse effects. When introduced into the fish farming environment the pathogens, however, more frequently cause serious diseases with major economic consequences. Combating such diseases represents a major challenge.

Strategies for combating diseases in fish

The Icelandic regulations for fish health and welfare include monitoring, control and combating relevant diseases by measures such as tie-ups, slaughtering, fallowing etc. of the locality as well as restrictions in respect of transport and the sale of fish etc. One important policy is the use of an official national monitoring programme for all farms, dating from year 1985. The purpose is to document the absence of exotic and other serious diseases. The surveillance covers the screening of salmonid brood fish to prevent the vertical transmission of certain pathogens. This helps to gain an important overview of diseases found at any given time and will subsequently form the basis for targeted public initiatives for controlling diseases in farmed fish. 

External quality control is the responsibility of Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority which operates under the direction of a Government-appointed Fish Disease Committee that advises Iceland’s Minister for Fisheries and Agriculture on all fish disease issues.

The Fish Disease Laboratory is a National Reference Laboratory offering applied veterinary research, health control, and diagnostic services for aquatic animals.

Valdimar Ingi Gunnarsson