Director General
IFFO – The Marine Ingredients Organisation
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 fishmeal industry is recognised to be very low carbon intensive because it mostly relies on purse seine gears (versus trawls) and because small pelagic fish are close to the shore and do not involve far away fuel intensive fishing expeditions. In contrast, the use of soy has been associated with risks of land use change (deforestation).
Second, adequate nutrition supports health, growth, and welfare. It has been found that reduced content of Omega-3 fatty acids and zinc in aquafeeds can affect the fish’s wound healing just as deficiency or sub-optimal supply of certain nutrients (zinc, histidine) can affect the eye health of the fish. New knowledge on the role of components in fishmeal and fish oil is being discovered, which needs consideration in feed formulations and dietary recommendations (Source: NOFIMA).
MAXIMISING AVAILABLE RESOURCES
With resource scarcity becoming evident, circularity is accelerating. In the fishmeal industry, which has always generated fish oil as a valuable co-product, the growth in the utilisation of fish by-products allows to use what was previous waste and develop it instead as another valuable raw material. In 2022, 38% of fishmeal and fish oil combined, produced globally, came from fish by-products. The new aspect to this age-old practice is that aquaculture is now a major player in the provision of marine ingredient raw materials, with by-products from farmed salmon, tilapia and pangasius sectors being significant contributors. There is scope for increased fishmeal and fish oil production from seafood by-products. Today, aquafeed producers make a great use of circular materials and take bold commitments to go even further. This has positive repercussions on aquafeeds’ carbon footprint, as the allocation of the carbon footprint of the catch is mostly attributed to the fish portion used for direct human consumption.
FOLLOWING THE FISH: YOU BETTER MANAGE WHAT YOU THOROUGHLY TRACK
Better measuring (following objective and standardised guidelines) leads to better resource management. According to the GFLI database (Global Feed Life Cycle Assessment Institute, 2023), soybean meal and soy protein concentrate have a carbon footprint that is more than twice and three times that of fishmeal respectively. As for insect meal, according to a recent LCA paper, it took 32.24kg of feed to produce 6.26kg of outputs of which only 1kg was insect meal. The reported carbon footprint was 5300kg CO2-equivalent per tonne of insect meal, vs Peruvian anchoveta meal at 624kg CO2-equivalent per tonne.
The carbon footprint of fishmeal keeps improving, according to a case study focusing on two Peruvian plants between 2019 and 2021. The author, Ian Vázquez-Rowe, researcher at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, suggests that the carbon emissions associated with fishmeal production have fallen by about 22% since 2019, mainly because of changes made in fishmeal processing and shipping (less dependency on marine diesel fuels).
BUILDING CREDIBILITY AND TRUST
The upcoming EU Greenwashing Directive is expected to bring more robustness and homogeneity to claims being made on carbon footprinting. Voluntary certification programmes are one side of a multi-faceted challenge. Every stakeholder needs to demonstrate its interest in maintaining a high standard. Traceability, in particular, requires collaboration and interoperability: this is costly, but the investment is well worth it. Long-term commitment is needed and should influence how buyers and their suppliers manage their relationship to navigate global supply chains, for the benefit of end consumers.
The aquaculture sector is at a crossroad: its responsibility in producing a low carbon, nutritious and healthy food is finally being recognised. Feed producers have great opportunities ahead to support the sector’s expansion. They are facing public scrutiny regarding their sourcing policies and political pressure around feed / food sovereignty. Keeping a science-based approach and demonstrating flexibility are the best way to navigate these challenges.
