PRESTIIS - Predicting Stress in Salmon

Intensive industrial production exposes animals to stress in association with transportation, vaccination, medical and mechanical treatment, handling, suboptimal rearing conditions, to mention a few. Such stressors may drive the animal over to allostatic overload, which diminish their ability to cope with stressors, resulting in compromised welfare and health. There is therefore a market demand for reliable and predicative animal welfare tools. Predicting Stress in Salmon - PRESTIIS, is a newly developed stress test for salmon. PRESTIIS take advantage of a set of differentially expressed biomarkers in a single reporter organ and how they relate to environmental and physiological limits that reduce the fish’s capacity to respond to new challenges and compromise welfare. In this project we will validate and refine the performance of PRESTIIS by analyzing a high number of indiviuals in order to generate sufficient statistical power that allows proper validation of differential responses in stressed and non-stressed fish in intensive industrial production. The project will undertake market analysis and a patentability search and freedom to operate analysis in order to secure intellectual property.

The main outcome from this project is development and commercialization of a predicative animal welfare tool, PRESTIIS, in aquaculture production. PRESTISS have the potential to impact the revenue-stream for gene-technology companies, providing informed assistance to experts and fish farmers in their decisions regarding impact and timing of operational stressors. This will ultimately lead to better fish welfare and thus reduce losses for the farmers, which translates into higher revenue.