Fish farms can now get free advice from vets on disease management, lab analyses

AQUACULTURE farms in Singapore can now get free advice from a subsidised service to manage diseases that impact their harvests and affect the survival and growth of aquatic animals.

With the launch of Singapore Food Agency’s (SFA) Aquatic Animal Health Services (AAHS) on Tuesday (Aug 1), farms can turn to aquatic animal health vets and other experts for professional consultations and disease investigations.

This comes as Singapore aims to produce 30 per cent of its nutritional needs by 2030, with seafood identified by SFA as a priority since it is a resource-efficient source of protein that can be grown by land-scarce Singapore.

However, diseases in the Republic’s waters can be deadly to farmed fishes, with one such pathogen – the scale drop disease virus – forcing Singapore’s only fish farm operator in the southern waters to stop commercial production at its three ocean-based farm sites.

On Tuesday, SFA said it has engaged veterinary consultancy service VetTrust Singapore through a tender, which was called in September 2022, to provide manpower for AAHS.

SFA said the service will enable the agency to gather information on the disease situation and areas for improvement on biosecurity practices in each farming region. This will benefit overall planning and resourcing to better support the local aquaculture industry.

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Dr Astrid Yeo, senior director of SFA’s Regulatory Standards and Veterinary Office, said: “This service is a step towards ensuring the sustainability of our tropical marine aquaculture and securing a steady supply of safe seafood.

“It is heartening to know that 11 farms have already signed up for AAHS. We encourage more farms to make use of this service to improve their farm biosecurity and management.”

In 2022, Singapore had 27 land-based seafood farms and another 109 based in the sea, the bulk of which were located in the Johor Strait.

Among those who signed up for the service was Kelvin Tang, director of Goh Marine Fishery, who said the new resource will help his workers learn to identify diseases earlier to minimise fish mortality.

“We signed up for this service as it will be very expensive or make no economic sense for individual farmers to seek such assistance from professionals on our own,” he added.

The AAHS will include laboratory diagnostic analyses for health screening during scheduled consultations and identifying causes during a disease investigation, as well as interpretation of the results and sharing advice on how to improve farm management.

SFA will fund two consultations for each farm annually in the first two years, followed by one consultation a year in the next two years. Farms will also get one disease investigation a year throughout the four years.

The funded consultations and disease investigations can be up to three hours per session, with the lab analyses provided to the farmers, SFA said.

It added that farmers will bear the costs of extended or extra consultations and disease investigations, prescribed veterinary drugs and chemicals, vaccines, transport and other expenses.