We have a legal and ethical responsibility to look after the health and welfare of fish. The Animal Welfare Act requires fish to have nutritious food, clean water, properly designed facilities and protection against disease and viruses. We must ensure good fish health and welfare every day through a focus on established welfare indicators, which are safeguarded daily through good smoking at the facilities.

The experience of our employees, combined with new, research-based knowledge, is also important for the health and welfare of fish. Everything we do to safeguard health and fish welfare must be documented and reported to authorities and other control bodies within aquaculture.

Plenty of space in the cages

Each cage has about 97.5 percent water and 2.5 percent fish. Thus, the salmon has plenty of room to swim around as it wishes. Nevertheless, the fish often stay together and swim around in close proximity to each other in the cages.

The fish are vaccinated

All salmon in Norway are vaccinated. This provides good protection against several key bacterial infections and the vaccination programme has meant that several diseases are under control. The fish is vaccinated at our hatchery before being put into the sea.

No use of antibiotics

It's a tenacious myth that salmon are given antibiotics. In Salaks, it's been decades since we last used antibiotics. Effective vaccines and infection prevention measures mean that the industry as a whole uses minimal antibiotics. Less than two percent of all salmon in Norway today have been treated with antibiotics, and this should only happen in specific disease cases when everything else has been tried first. The reason for the low consumption is the focus on prevention, fish welfare and good vaccines that are used correctly.

This is how we fight salmon lice

Salmon lice are the most common parasite on salmonids. The salmon louse uses the salmon as a host and helps to weaken the health of the fish. Salmon lice have been a major challenge for the aquaculture industry for several years. Good control and good practices for counting salmon lice are important in the interests of wild salmon and the welfare of farmed salmon. It is also a statutory requirement. If you want to check the lice status in Troms, see barentswatch.com.

The aquaculture industry spends considerable resources annually on lice control. Much research is being done on technology and new methods of combating the parasite. We have various measures to prevent lice infestation. Exceeding the lice limits we need to process:

• We produce large smolt which is about 250 grams when we put it out into the sea. It makes the fish more resilient, and we shorten the growth time in the sea, which also reduces exposure to lice.
• We prevent with the use of lice skirts. It is a net that attaches to the cage and prevents lice larvae from getting in to the fish.
• We have a good effect with the use of lice lasers. The lice laser is mounted in the cages, and a camera identifies lice on the fish swimming in the cage. A laser beam “pulses” and kills each individual salmon louse without harming the fish.
• If prevention is not enough and we have to treat against lice, we must carry out a mechanical deworming. We have established a separate freshwater pool where we collect fresh water with well boats. The fish are then bathed in the cold fresh water of the well boat. It removes lice and brings little harm and stress to the fish.
• Ultimately and exceptionally, we opt for drug lice treatment.

Better control of feeding

Feed is a major input factor in farming and it is important for both the environment and the economy that we feed properly without feed waste. Farmed salmon eat dry feed shaped like pellets. About 70 percent of the feed consists of vegetable ingredients, while about 30 percent comes from marine raw materials such as fish meal and fish oil. Feed is expensive and what is not eaten by the fish can pose an environmental problem, while being very uneconomical for us. We have gained better control by establishing a separate feeding centre. From here we feed all the fish in all our localities through a central onshore and using cameras in the cages. This gives us better control over the feeding and we have a separate team specialized for this central work task. This provides a maximum feeding effect for the fish and the enterprise, while avoiding overfeeding.