Applied epidemiology with examples from UK aquaculture

This paper is a brief introduction to epidemiology and its application to farmed fish health and welfare with examples from the United Kingdom. Epidemiology has the potential to do a great deal more than just identify risk factors. Indeed in many cases useful risk factors cannot be identified due to the complexity of the disease problems and the lack of resources. Epidemiological principles or analytical techniques have been applied in animal welfare studies, and they can reduce the cost of disease monitoring or surveillance and disease control. However, for epidemiological studies to make a real contribution to farmed fish health and welfare it is often necessary to use multi-disciplinary teams, obtain good data and coordinate efforts on the major problems.