Summary: As part of our commitment to making programs more evidence-based, FWI is developing a welfare assessment protocol to better quantify the wellbeing of Indian major carps—the primary beneficiaries of our work. While water quality indicators have been a primary focus in the past, this protocol aims to expand our assessment by incorporating additional welfare indicators, namely physical health, nutritional, and behavioral ones. Field testing of the beta version began this month (December), and we aim to conclude it by the second quarter of 2025.
Context and Rationale
Water quality has always been central to how we measure fish welfare at FWI’s farm program. While this metric is essential, it’s also only part of a larger picture. A truly holistic welfare assessment must also account for physical health, nutrition, and behavior, alongside environmental factors.
To address this, we’re developing a welfare assessment protocol specifically tailored to Indian major carps (IMCs) in Andhra Pradesh. This tool is designed to measure, in addition to environmental (water quality) welfare standards, also physical health, nutritional, and behavioral welfare. By integrating these diverse indicators into a single, practical framework, we intend that this protocol will enable us to better:
Compare welfare at different snapshots in time.
Evaluate welfare improvements across various interventions (e.g., fortified feed versus satellite-monitored water quality).
Quantify the magnitude of welfare improvements, helping potential donors make better-informed decisions about the cost-effectiveness of FWI's work.
Protocol Development Process
Earlier in 2024, we drafted the welfare assessment protocol, drawing inspiration from the Tilapia Welfare Assessment Protocol created by Dr. Ana Silvia Pedrazzani and FAI Farms in Brazil. While as per our value of transparency we would typically share the draft protocol publicly at this stage, our current aim to publish it in a peer-reviewed journal requires us to refrain from doing so for now.
We are now entering the field testing phase, which will unfold in two distinct stages, as outlined in Figure 1 below. Ethical approval for the field testing was granted by Adikavi Nannaya University’s Institutional Ethical Committee.
Phase 1: Protocol Refining
Earlier this month (December), we began field-testing a beta version of the welfare assessment protocol. This version includes indicators spanning nutrition, environmental conditions, health, and behavior—all core welfare components of IMC fishes.
Over the next three to four months, feedback from field staff will guide iterative refinements in the protocol. These might include:
Adding or removing indicators
Refining scoring systems
Clarifying guidelines for assessors
These changes will strive to improve clarity, efficiency, accuracy and implementability, hopefully resulting in a final output that is more informative and practical to conduct.
Phase 2: Ensuring Consistency Between Assessors
Once refined, the protocol will enter a second phase focused on consistency. This will involve having multiple staff independently assess the same farms to identify variability in final scores. Any inconsistencies in scores will inform adjustments to scoring methods and training materials. During the second quarter of 2025, we aim to have a final protocol that produces reliable welfare scores regardless of who conducted the assessment.
Looking Ahead
It is our ultimate aspiration here to have a validated, locally contextualized protocol that enables greater clarity about the effectiveness of welfare interventions for IMCs. While this protocol is still early in its development, we hope it will live up to this aspiration, and significantly improve the evidence base of FWI's programs.
As usual, we will continue to share updates on our blog.
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