September 11, 2025
FAI scales up training to boost tilapia welfare: here’s why
Welfare isn’t extra – it’s essential. Building on our existing program of tilapia welfare courses, our latest is all about health.
Sara Barrento
Head of e-Learning
Sara is a marine biologist from Portugal passionate about communication, training and making complex topics accessible to all audiences in the supply chain. She is FAI’s Head of Training managing FAI Academy and the training management system Wyllow. She also co-creates and delivers free online and blended training events available in many languages to aquaculture farmers globally.
Sara completed her PhD on the nutritional quality and physiological responses to transport and storage of live crustaceans traded in Portugal in 2010 at Porto University. Since then, she has worked as a post-doc in Portugal, Chile and the UK on international collaborative projects related to the live trade of farmed mussels, kelp farming and the welfare of fish and shrimp. She started lecturing at Swansea University in 2015, where she maintains an honorary role.
Sara lives in Wales where you’ll find her mountain biking wherever there are trails, surfing off the Gower or sweating at hot yoga.
FAI has launched Tilapia Health Welfare Indicators, its latest online course giving vets, farmers and seafood supply chain professionals access to more expert training than ever before. Sara Barrento explains why.
Reflections on designing our new Tilapia Health Welfare Indicators course
We open with a tough question: what is an acceptable mortality rate for farmed tilapia? It’s not a gentle start, but it’s an important one.
When we created the behavioural welfare course, I thought it would be the hardest, but this course on health was even more challenging.
Health is inevitably linked to disease, and diseases come with complicated names, symptoms and consequences – and hard to translate into something practical and accessible.
Our goals were clear
To help farmers recognise when tilapia are unwell
To help farm managers understand welfare is essential
To give veterinarians a shared language to support farmers
To make sure everyone, from the person feeding the fish to the person buying the fish, can be better informed about fish health welfare and how it impacts us
Course format
In a world of short attention spans, how do you explain zoonoses? Or antimicrobial resistance? Or the anatomy of a fish?
When distraction is just a click away, we had to ask ourselves:
- Should everything be reduced to 1-minute microlearning videos?
- Will learners drop out after 5 minutes or stay for the full 5 hours this course takes?
We chose to believe in audience curiosity.
This course is designed to go deep but stay clear. To challenge the learners but not overwhelm them. To make complex topics accessible without dumbing them down.
We built this course to support the farmer and others working in the supply chain by making complex fish health challenges easier to understand, so they can be prevented where possible, and better controlled when they arise.
If you think you can benefit from this course, try it for free – and share it with a colleague.
Then, tell us what helped and if anything could be better. Your feedback helps us shape aquaculture training that works in the real world – where aquaculture isn’t simple and welfare is essential. Let’s make welfare the standard — not the exception.
About the Tilapia Health Welfare Indicators course
Who it’s for: farmers feeding the fish, managers making decisions, vets who need to be heard, and the future of aquaculture.
Six languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Thai, Vietnamese
5 hours of self-paced online learning modules
Course content: why health and welfare matters, welfare indicators, scoring tilapia health, and common diseases affecting tilapia.
Certificate of competition valid for 18 months
LATEST NEWS
Discover the Latest in Food & Agriculture: Innovations, Insights, and Impactful Stories
SHARE
Sara Barrento
Head of e-Learning
Sara is a marine biologist from Portugal passionate about communication, training and making complex topics accessible to all audiences in the supply chain. She is FAI’s Head of Training managing FAI Academy and the training management system Wyllow. She also co-creates and delivers free online and blended training events available in many languages to aquaculture farmers globally.
Sara completed her PhD on the nutritional quality and physiological responses to transport and storage of live crustaceans traded in Portugal in 2010 at Porto University. Since then, she has worked as a post-doc in Portugal, Chile and the UK on international collaborative projects related to the live trade of farmed mussels, kelp farming and the welfare of fish and shrimp. She started lecturing at Swansea University in 2015, where she maintains an honorary role.
Sara lives in Wales where you’ll find her mountain biking wherever there are trails, surfing off the Gower or sweating at hot yoga.