Toward evidence-based fish welfare regulation: policy lessons from Chile, Norway, and Scotland.
- 1Laboratorio de Biotecnología Molecular, Facultad de Ciencias de la Vida, Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago, Chile.
- 2Interdisciplinary Center for Aquaculture Research-Applied Research (INCAR2), Universidad Andres Bello, Santiago, Chile.
- 3Centro de Investigación Marina Quintay (CIMARQ), Universidad Andres Bello, Quintay, Chile.
Abstract
Aquaculture has become a major contributor to global food production, but its rapid expansion and intensification have increased concerns regarding the welfare of farmed fish. Although advances in welfare science have generated animal-based measures, operational welfare indicators, and increasingly sophisticated monitoring technologies, their incorporation into regulatory frameworks remains uneven. This review examines the evolution of fish welfare regulation and compares the regulatory approaches of Chile, Norway, and Scotland, three major salmon-producing jurisdictions representing distinct models of welfare governance. The analysis distinguishes between legislation that directly establishes welfare obligations and sanitary, environmental, biosecurity, and production regulations that indirectly influence welfare determinants. Chile combines explicit legal recognition of fish welfare with an extensive sanitary and environmental regulatory architecture, although standardized animal-based welfare assessment, intervention criteria, and welfare-specific auditing remain limited. Norway is characterized by the direct incorporation of detailed welfare requirements into aquaculture regulation, complemented by structured monitoring, documentation, and science-based assessment tools. Scotland represents a more distributed model in which statutory welfare duties are complemented by aquaculture and animal-health legislation, government guidance, industry codes, and scientific assessment tools. Importantly, differences in regulatory operationalization should not be interpreted as evidence of differences in regulatory effectiveness, which requires independent evaluation through measurable welfare outcomes. Based on this comparison, we propose Evidence-Based Welfare Regulation (EBWR) as an integrative regulatory framework connecting legal welfare objectives with evidence-qualified resource-, management-, and animal-based indicators, standardized monitoring, context-specific thresholds or reference ranges, corrective actions, outcome verification, and periodic scientific review. Rather than introducing a new welfare-assessment methodology, EBWR integrates existing scientific and regulatory tools within an adaptive feedback system. For Chile, this transition could build on existing regulatory and institutional capacities through species-specific welfare standards, evidence-qualified operational welfare indicators, risk-based monitoring, outcome verification, and adaptive regulatory review.
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BibTeX
@article{valdes2026toward,
title = {{Toward evidence-based fish welfare regulation: policy lessons from Chile, Norway, and Scotland.}},
author = {Juan Antonio Valdés},
journal = {Frontiers in veterinary science},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.3389/fvets.2026.1972966},
url = {https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42997332},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Toward evidence-based fish welfare regulation: policy lessons from Chile, Norway, and Scotland.
AU - Juan Antonio Valdés
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/23
JO - Frontiers in veterinary science
DO - 10.3389/fvets.2026.1972966
UR - https://europepmc.org/article/MED/42997332
AB - Aquaculture has become a major contributor to global food production, but its rapid expansion and intensification have increased concerns regarding the welfare of farmed fish. Although advances in welfare science have generated animal-based measures, operational welfare indicators, and increasingly sophisticated monitoring technologies, their incorporation into regulatory frameworks remains uneven. This review examines the evolution of fish welfare regulation and compares the regulatory approaches of Chile, Norway, and Scotland, three major salmon-producing jurisdictions representing distinct models of welfare governance. The analysis distinguishes between legislation that directly establishes welfare obligations and sanitary, environmental, biosecurity, and production regulations that indirectly influence welfare determinants. Chile combines explicit legal recognition of fish welfare with an extensive sanitary and environmental regulatory architecture, although standardized animal-based welfare assessment, intervention criteria, and welfare-specific auditing remain limited. Norway is characterized by the direct incorporation of detailed welfare requirements into aquaculture regulation, complemented by structured monitoring, documentation, and science-based assessment tools. Scotland represents a more distributed model in which statutory welfare duties are complemented by aquaculture and animal-health legislation, government guidance, industry codes, and scientific assessment tools. Importantly, differences in regulatory operationalization should not be interpreted as evidence of differences in regulatory effectiveness, which requires independent evaluation through measurable welfare outcomes. Based on this comparison, we propose Evidence-Based Welfare Regulation (EBWR) as an integrative regulatory framework connecting legal welfare objectives with evidence-qualified resource-, management-, and animal-based indicators, standardized monitoring, context-specific thresholds or reference ranges, corrective actions, outcome verification, and periodic scientific review. Rather than introducing a new welfare-assessment methodology, EBWR integrates existing scientific and regulatory tools within an adaptive feedback system. For Chile, this transition could build on existing regulatory and institutional capacities through species-specific welfare standards, evidence-qualified operational welfare indicators, risk-based monitoring, outcome verification, and adaptive regulatory review.
SN - 2297-1769
ER -