In aquaculture, survival rates, harvest volumes, and growth curves are essential KPIs; however, they only tell part of the story. These KPIs are ultimately the final proof of performance and the basis on which the success of any product, including ours, is measured. However, health challenges do not always manifest as mortality, clear clinical signs, or sudden drops in KPIs that allow us to react in time. Many health alterations are silent.
Global Product Manager for Aquaculture Health and Farm Care
Adisseo
In aquaculture, success is often measured by survival rates, harvest volumes, and growth curves, yet these metrics tell only part of the story. Many underlying, “invisible” factors—such as chronic low-grade inflammation, oxidative stress, compromised gut integrity, and behavioral stress caused by handling, stocking density, or water quality fluctuations—can silently limit animals’ ability to express their full genetic and nutritional potential. Even when overt disease or mortality is avoided, subclinical health issues divert energy from growth, reduce feed efficiency, and ultimately impact overall productivity and profitability.
Alex Makol, Global Product Manager for Aquaculture Health and Farm Care at Adisseo, emphasizes the importance of shifting from a reactive, treatment-focused approach to proactive health management. By strengthening key tissues and physiological systems, supporting gut functionality, and mitigating both visible and hidden stressors, producers can unlock higher performance, more predictable growth, and greater feed conversion efficiency. Functional feed additives play a critical role in this strategy, providing targeted solutions that enhance immunocompetence, resilience, and overall robustness. In this interview, Makol explains how integrated, evidence-based nutritional strategies allow aquaculture producers to maximize output, reduce variability, and achieve more sustainable and economically efficient production.
In aquaculture, success is often measured by survival rates, harvest volumes, and growth curves. However, you believe that addressing these alone is not enough. In your view, what are the “invisible” factors that prevent animals from reaching their full genetic and nutritional potential?
In aquaculture, survival rates, harvest volumes, and growth curves are essential KPIs; however, they only tell part of the story. These KPIs are ultimately the final proof of performance and the basis on which the success of any product, including ours, is measured.
However, health challenges do not always manifest as mortality, clear clinical signs, or sudden drops in KPIs that allow us to react in time. Many health alterations are silent. They may remain subclinical or eventually evolve into more visible outbreaks, but long before that, they already limit the animal’s ability to express its full genetic and nutritional potential.
These “invisible” constraints include chronic low-grade inflammation, repeated immune activation, oxidative stress, compromised gut integrity, and behavioral stress caused by handling, stocking density, or water quality fluctuations. Individually, they may seem minor, but together they divert energy away from growth and feed efficiency. The animal survives and even grows, but not optimally.
Our approach focuses on both ends of the spectrum: controlling and mitigating clinical outbreaks when they appear and addressing the non-visible stressors that silently erode performance long before KPIs show a red flag. This is what allows production systems to reach, not just approach, their full biological and economic potential.
While it is often easier to detect and intervene in clinical diseases, why is managing subclinical health issues more challenging? Could you explain these subclinical problems in aquaculture and their impact on feed efficiency, growth rates and biomass output?
Subclinical health issues are inherently more difficult to manage because they do not present clear and immediate warning signs. There is no mortality spike, no obvious lesions, and no single pathogen to target. Instead, producers observe gradual changes, such as lower growth rates, increased FCR, higher size variability, and inconsistent harvest outcomes.
In aquaculture, subclinical challenges often stem from gut dysbiosis, low-grade infections, mycotoxin exposure, and repeated environmental stressors. The impacts of these factors are cumulative. Feed efficiency declines because nutrients are used to sustain immune responses rather than growth. Growth rates slow, cycles are extended, and total biomass output is reduced. These hidden losses can represent a significant share of unrealized profits.
Even if animals survive a clinical disease, why can performance loss persist for a long time afterward? How do you evaluate the impact of recovery time on economic performance from a producer’s perspective?
Even when animals survive a clinical disease episode, the biological cost does not end with their survival. During illness, tissues are damaged, gut function is impaired, and immune reserves are depleted. Recovery requires time and resources, and during this period, the growth potential is permanently or partially lost.
From the producer’s perspective, the recovery time has a direct economic impact. Delayed growth results in longer production cycles, higher fixed costs, and less efficient use of infrastructure. In many cases, animals never fully “catch up,” which translates into lower final biomass or downgraded size classes at the time of harvest. Therefore, evaluating the disease’s impact must include not only mortality but also lost growth potential.
How should producers approach both clinical and subclinical challenges? As Adisseo, how do you define the shift from a “treatment-oriented” approach to a “proactive health management”?
Producers must address both clinical and subclinical challenges using a holistic and integrated approach. Clinical diseases require rapid, targeted interventions; however, relying solely on treatments is reactive and often costly.
At Adisseo, we define the shift toward proactive health management as moving upstream—strengthening animals before problems arise. This means focusing on robustness, gut functionality, and stress resilience as part of the daily feeding strategies. The objective is not to cure diseases but to reduce the frequency, severity, and performance impact of health challenges across the entire production cycle.
What do functional feed additives promise producers in terms of health-based performance management? How would you define the impact of these additives on immunocompetence, resistance, and resilience?
Functional feed additives can strongly support health-driven performance, but their impact depends on choosing the right solution for the specific challenge present on the farm. Not all additives work through the same biological mechanisms, and applying a generic product does not guarantee results. What matters is aligning the additive’s mode of action—whether targeting inflammation, oxidative stress, gut integrity, or immune balance—with the underlying stressor.
When this match is correct, animals maintain stronger immunocompetence, cope better with challenges, and recover performance faster, which ultimately supports more stable growth and feed efficiency. At Adisseo, our focus is precisely this targeted approach: using well-characterized, evidence-based solutions that address defined biological constraints and contribute to more consistent outcomes under real farming conditions.
Why is it important to have multiple mechanisms of action working together rather than a single mechanism in health management? How can the synergy of these mechanisms be concretely observed in terms of performance indicators in the field?
In aquaculture, relying on a single mechanism of action is usually insufficient because animals are almost never exposed to just one challenge at a time. Farming occurs in open, dynamic environments where temperature, water quality, handling, and stocking conditions can shift rapidly. These fluctuations create overlapping layers of stress that interact and amplify each other. A good example is the behavior of opportunistic bacteria: the moment there is a disturbance in the animal’s natural balance, whether from stress, gut integrity issues, or environmental fluctuations, these bacteria take advantage and intensify the problem.
This complexity implies that effective health support necessitates solutions with multiple complementary mechanisms of action. By simultaneously acting on inflammation, oxidative stress, gut function, microbiota balance, and immune modulation, we created a broader and more sustainable protective effect. In the field, the synergy between these mechanisms translates into clearer performance outcomes: more stable growth, better feed efficiency, and faster stress recovery. This multi-layered approach helps producers maintain consistent results despite the inherent variability of aquaculture environments.
At this point, what solutions does Adisseo provide to support aquaculture producers? Could you share the primary mechanisms of action behind these solutions and the performance outcomes observed in the field?
Adisseo supports aquaculture producers with functional solutions designed to help animals maintain their performance when facing real and unavoidable production stressors. Our approach focuses on strengthening key tissues, such as the gut, gills, skin, and liver (or hepatopancreas for shrimp), which play a central role in immunity, metabolism, and overall robustness. By acting on these critical interfaces, our solutions help stabilize physiological balance, allowing animals to better cope with environmental fluctuations and microbial pressure.
These products work through complementary mechanisms, including modulation of inflammation, reinforcement of epithelial barriers, optimization of microbiota, and improved oxidative stress management. In the field, this translates into clearer outcomes: better feed efficiency, consistent growth rates, and improved stability under challenging conditions. Importantly, producers observe benefits not only during disease pressure but also in day-to-day operations, where subtle, unnoticed stressors often erode performance. Our objective is to provide practical, evidence-based tools that help production systems achieve more predictable and resilient results.
How does Adisseo’s SustainWay approach provide a roadmap for aquaculture producers in the long term?
Adisseo’s SustainWay approach provides a long-term- framework that integrates performance, health, and sustainability. It helps producers move from short-term problem solving to strategic production optimization by focusing on resource efficiency, animal robustness, and environmental responsibility.
Rather than offering isolated solutions, SustainWay connects nutrition, health, and sustainability objectives into a coherent roadmap, supporting producers as regulations, consumer expectations, and production systems evolve.
Finally, how does optimizing health to drive performance align with sustainability goals in aquaculture? What does the approach of “more consistent performance with fewer resources” mean for the producers?
Optimizing health to drive performance is fully aligned with the sustainability goals. Healthier animals convert feed more efficiently, require fewer interventions, and utilize resources such as feed, water, and energy more effectively.
Optimizing health to drive performance directly aligns with sustainability because healthier animals use resources more efficiently. When animals maintain better gut integrity, stronger immunity, and a more stable physiological balance, they convert feed more effectively, require fewer interventions, and show more predictable growth. All of these factors reduce the environmental footprint per kilogram of biomass produced.
For producers, the concept of “more consistent performance with fewer resources” means lowering risk while improving margins and reducing environmental footprint. Stable health translates into better feed efficiency, shorter cycles, fewer losses, and less variability, allowing each unit of feed, energy, or labor to generate more value. In the long term, this is what enables production systems to reach—not just approach—their full biological and economic potential, while meeting the increasing expectations for responsible and sustainable aquaculture.
About Robert Van Saun
A professor of veterinary science and extension veterinarian with Pennsylvania State University, Dr. Robert Van Saun provides extension programs across species on various nutrition, animal health, and reproductive topics regionally, nationally, and internationally. His research interests include the role of nutrition in animal health and performance, especially pregnancy nutrition, and improving diagnostic tests to evaluate nutritional status.
