As aquaculture continues to grow and intensify, there is an increasing public concern over the welfare of farmed fish. Stress and production‐related pathologies and repressed growth are examples of the challenges facing aquaculture, and their impacts could be minimised by effective identification of the early signs of impaired welfare. Many welfare monitoring methods have been recommended; however, continuous and reliable welfare monitoring in aquaculture is not yet widespread and commonplace. The aim of this scoping review was to present an overview of the most recent developments in fish welfare assessments with a specific focus on practical translation to the aquaculture industry. A keyword‐based search was undertaken to identify peer‐reviewed papers published between 2014 and 2020 in which a novel method with the potential to be used for the assessment of fish welfare in aquaculture was introduced. The results were sorted into two categories: non‐invasive and invasive methods. All methods were assessed for their advantages and disadvantages, potential applicability to aquaculture. Invasive methods were also ranked on their degree of impact. It is concluded that increased interest into fish welfare, in combination with more intelligent modern technology, has resulted in the development of newer and more refined alternatives to traditional methods of welfare assessment such as behaviour monitoring by 2D cameras and plasma cortisol evaluation. Although, in many cases, more research is needed before these methods are suitable for widespread industry use, studies that focus on increasing the precision, automation and practical applicability of these methods are a promising avenue for future research.

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Urbanisation exposes avian wildlife to an array of environmental stressors that result in clinical admission and hospitalisation. The aim of this pilot study was to conduct a retrospective analysis of clinical data and characterise this based on categories of stress experienced by avian wildlife patients. The results from this study indicated that impact injuries (n = 33, 25%) and vehicle-related injuries (n = 33, 25%) were the most common occurring preliminary stressors that resulted in the hospitalisation of avian wildlife. The most common outcome of avian patients that suffered from vehicle-related injuries was euthanasia (n = 15, 45%), as was avian patients that suffered from impact injuries (n = 16, 48%). Immobility (n = 105, 61%) and abnormal behaviour (n = 24, 14%) were the most commonly occurring primary stressors of avian patients. Finally, trauma (n = 51, 32%) and fractures (n = 44, 27%) were the most common occurring secondary stressors in avian patients. The most common outcome of all these stressors was euthanasia. This study provided further evidence towards the notion that human- and urbanisation-related stressors are the main causes of hospitalisation of avian wildlife, but also indicated that birds admitted as a result of human-related stressors are more likely to be euthanised than released. This study also provided a categorisation system for the stressors identified in avian wildlife patients (preliminary, primary and secondary) that may be used to monitor the stress categories of wildlife patients and gain a deeper understanding of the complex notion of stress.

In this retrospective study, we conducted a desktop-based analysis of published literature using the ScienceDirect™ search engine to determine the proportion of livestock research within the last 7 years (2015–2021) that have applied animal welfare assessment combining objective measures of physiological stress and evaluation of climate change factors in order to provide an account of livestock productivity. From the search results, 563 published articles were reviewed. We found that the majority of the literature had discussed animal production outcomes (n = 491) and animal welfare (n = 453) either individually or in conjunction with another topic. The most popular occurrence was the combination of animal welfare assessment, objective measures of stress physiology and production outcomes discussed collectively (n = 218). We found that only 125 articles had discussed the impact of climate change (22.20%) on livestock production and/or vice versa. Furthermore, only 9.4% (n = 53) of articles had discussed all four factors and published research was skewed towards the dairy sector. Overall, this retrospective paper highlights that although research into animal welfare assessment, objective measures of stress and climate change has been applied across livestock production systems (monogastrics and ruminants), there remains a shortfall of investigation on how these key factors interact to influence livestock production. Furthermore, emerging technologies that can boost the quantitative evaluation of animal welfare are needed for both intensive and extensive production systems.

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