AbstractFish farming is increasingly dependent on plant commodities as a source of feed leading to an increased risk for pesticide residues in aquaculture diets and consequently their transfer into aquaculture food products. The European pesticide regulation requires fish metabolism and fish feeding studies where residues in fish feed exceed 0.1 mg kg−1 of the total diet (dry weight basis) to enable the setting of appropriate maximum residue levels in fish commodities. Fish dietary burden calculation is therefore an important prerequisite to decide on further experimental testing as part of the consumer risk assessment. In this review, the different aquaculture production systems are compared with regard to their specific feeding practices and the principles of dietary burden calculation are described. © 2016 Fraunhofer‐Institut für Molekularbiologie und Angewandte Oekologie. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.