A new system for monitoring health status in Norwegian aquaculture

In Norway there is an official system (ANISTAT) for reporting notifiable diseases to the Norwegian Food Safety Authority, which is mainly done by veterinarians and laboratories. Another separate official system (HAVBRUKSDATA) is also in place, for reporting production data from fish farms, such as the number of fish put into the sea, and their weight, density, feed consumption and mortality. The reported data are aggregated monthly with information from companies' private databases related to each production site and each production unit. There also are official procedures in place for the registration of drugs used in aquaculture, based on veterinary prescriptions. However there is no electronic system for active reporting diseases influencing production and/or welfare. It is our aim to establish a more advanced official system for monitoring the health situation in Norwegian fish farms (MFISK) by linking relevant production data from the various private databases to an official disease database. The output of the new system will be improved statistics on diseases in the Norwegian fish farming industry, with diseases sorted by their impact on production and welfare. This will enable us to identify diseases that, over time, cause such losses that they should be dealt with by the authorities, or by the farmers themselves. It will also have an early warning function regarding new/emerging diseases or disease trends. This system quantifies losses due to health problems and, in the long run, will be a useful tool for strengthening fish health. The system aims to combine data from various sources: the veterinary and fisheries authorities in Norway, farmers, veterinarians and laboratories. To be sustainable, it will need the active and constructive cooperation of all these stakeholders.