A Proteomics and other Omics approach in the context of farmed fish welfare and biomarker discovery

The rapid and intensive growth of aquaculture over the last decade, poses a tremendous challenge to this industry in order to comply with the latest guidelines, established to minimise its negative effects on the environment, animal welfare and public health. Farmed fish welfare has become one of the main priorities towards sustainable aquaculture production with several initiatives launched by the European Union within the framework of the 2030 agenda. It is clear that an unbiased and reliable way to access farmed fish welfare needs to be implemented due to the lack of reliable indicators and standardised methods that are used at present. In this review, we start by addressing the status quo of animal and fish welfare definition in particular, describing the methods and assays currently used to measure it. We then explain why we believe these methods are unreliable and why there is a need to establish new ones that will promote productivity and consumer's acceptance of farmed fish. The establishment of a new type of welfare biomarkers using cutting-edge technologies like proteomics and other omics technologies is proposed as a solution to this issue. Therefore, we provide a brief description of these new methodologies, describing for each one how they can improve our scientific knowledge and the role they can play in farmed fish welfare biomarker discovery.