6 FEED & ADDITIVE MAGAZINE August 2024 The feed sector is a blind spot for most consumers, and its critical contribution to ensuring food safety and security is not well understood. Feed is indirect food for humans and as such should be nutrient-dense, well-regulated to prevent fraud and contamination, accessible and responsibly sourced and produced. Manufacturing feed is not only important to support food production but is also a way to absorb residual biomass. In the face of a growing population, climate change and increased volatility due to geopolitics and weather conditions, the sourcing and production of feed materials is becoming more and more strategic. In the aquaculture sector, feed represents 80 to 90% of both carbon footprint and costs. Innovation is a constant both in terms of feed formulation and at the fish farm. VOLUMES: THE KEY CHALLENGE In the 1990, aquafeeds were made of a few ingredients such as fishmeal, wheat and a few additives. With the impressive growth of aquaculture production in the early 2000s, diversifying the ingredient basket became a necessity to ensure that the supply of feed ingredients would match the demand. With fishmeal and its co-product, fish oil, used as a benchmark ingredient, research for novel ingredients started, and additional volumes of ingredients used in other sectors were sourced, like soybean meal. We are talking of 40 million of additional feed ingredients needed by 2050 to further develop aquaculture production! INTAKE AND PALATABILITY ARE KEY IN FISH FARMING In this context, fishmeal and fish oil have become strategic ingredients instead of remaining a commodity. It is now well established that they should be used at key stages of the fish’s growth, in fry and juvenile stages in mainly carnivorous species. Indeed, their nutritional profile makes it the gold standard for intake and palatability, which remain the first and most important hurdles in fish farming. After the first weeks, animals can compensate: longer-term nutritional drivers (e.g. hunger) begin to override the palatability aspect. Considering both volume and cost-effective supply, plant-based proteins like soybean, corn, and wheat protein sources already make up the majority of aquaculture feeds around the world. In 2020 aquafeed production was at 52 million tonnes, of which only about 6 million tonnes were fishmeal and fish oil. All these sources complement each other and more can be done to explore how they work together. For example, plant-based proteins do bring some antinutritional factors, and their palatability is neutral at best. These are weaknesses that need to be offset with fishmeal and fish oil to add important nutritional values and palatability elements. LEARNING FROM THE PAST TO IMPROVE CARBON FOOTPRINT AND FISH HEALTH Risks should be assessed, and lessons learnt from the past: first, the increased use of soybean and soy protein concentrate in the 2000s has led to a deterioration of the aquafeed’s carbon profile. The FEED AND FEED INGREDIENTS FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE AQUACULTURE INDUSTRY Petter Martin Johannessen Director General IFFO – The Marine Ingredients Organisation LEAD ARTICLE
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